Military Park, which had been built in 1942 as company housing for the Winterborn Munitions Corporation, was far from the worst neighborhood in Poison Springs. On the contrary, even though the North Winterborn Munitions Corporation had gone out of business the year after the Korean War ended, all of the individual leases were still in effect, and would be until 2041. That meant no property taxes and long waiting lists to get in. Many of the little houses had extensive modifications, above ground swimming pools, and late model SUVs parked out front on the street. She made a sharp right turn when she noticed the old Winterborn Munitions corporate headquarters on the north side of the Scahentoarrhonon River. She parked alongside a small two bedroom house across the street from an 18-wheeler with a "WillyMart" trailer. She got out, pulled her knapsack out of the backseat, slammed the door shut, and took a deep breath.
On two metal poles, stuck into the ground in front the blue, well-kept little bungalow, was a faded, weather-beaten, plastic-covered banner with a photo of a man in his early middle-age. Robert Chegoffgan, it read, 1963-2003. In the morning, as it came up over the mountains in the east, the sun, shining directly between two trees onto the facade of the house illuminated Robert Chegoffgan's blue eyes, almost as if they had been a vision of a watery paradise into which his daughter's childhood had been sunk forever.
It also meant that her mother was on her morning rounds checking the lids of the garbage cans.
Mary Chegoffgan, nee O'Connor, had begun her obsessive compulsive rituals the day after they put up the banner. At first she did nothing more than look out the window a few times a day to make sure it hadn't been stolen. One day, however, she decided to wander through the neighborhood to make sure everything surrounding her husband's image was in proper order. For some reason, this meant the garbage can lids. All of the handles had to be pointing east, and they all had to be checked once every morning and once every evening. That gave her daughter, who opened the door, and walked inside the house, plenty of time before her mother came back.
Cathy Chegoffgan did a quick walk through the living room, and the bathroom before she went into the kitchen. The inside of the house was a combination of dirt and obsessive cleanliness. The living room was clean and well-ordered, except for the rug. Robert Chegoffgan had been dead for over of a decade, but his beer stains were still on the carpet. The bathroom was clean, except for the mold in the stall shower. The kitchen was not. There were never any dirty dishes in the sink, but the microwave was usually caked with dried up tomato sauce. The refrigerator was even worse. No milk carton could be thrown away until it was empty. Yet no glass of milk could contain any less than 8 ounces of milk and could not be composed of milk from more than one carton. If Mary Chegoffgan made a mistake in measuring out 8 ounces of milk, the carton would usually stay inside the refrigerator for months, even after it went sour. But it wasn't the sour milk inside the refrigerator that made Cathy Chegoffgan wince.
It was the display taped to the front door.
"Oh why won't you let me throw this away," she whispered under her breath as she looked at the collection of newspaper and magazine articles her mother had taped up years before. "Why can't I throw this away?"
The centerpiece was the cover of a now defunct magazine. One of their reporters had sweet talked Mary Chegoffgan out of a photo of her daughter. Cathy Chegoffgan was 10 years old, wearing a white dress and holding a 9mm semi-automatic over her chest. She had very pale skin, a smirk in the corner of her mouth, and long, golden hair. Her father had taken the picture as a joke, never realizing the same gun would kill him a few days before his 40th birthday. "Killer Angel," the title said in big, block letters. "Can This Girl be the Face of Second Amendment repeal?"
"Actually I can throw it away," she said, carefully peeling the decade old scotch tape off the refrigerator, and putting the magazine cover face down on the kitchen table, "any time I want."
She removed a series of newspaper articles, carefully pealing the tape off each one as she put it down on top of the magazine cover. Most of them were small. There were brief mentions in the New York Times and Philadelphia Enquirer, a paragraph long mention in USA Today, and a collection of obituaries. There was also a feature length article in the Winterborn Daily Post.
"Local Girl Shoots Father in Tragic Accident," the title read.
She wiped off the decade old residue of Scotch Tape off the refrigerator with Windex, put the newspaper articles under her arm, and then went into her old bedroom. Her bedroom was now mostly empty. Her mother hadn't rented it out or furnished it herself. There was a stripped down bed, a dresser, two large mirrors, and a 10-year-old jacket draped over a wobbly chair. There was a battered old copy of The Interpretation of Dreams on top of a battered old copy of The Selected Works of Thomas Aquinas. There was an old VCR player and a stack of tapes.
Cathy Chegoffgan went over to the closet and opened the door. There was another, child sized jacket, an older, adult sized jacket, and three "ecclesiastical garments" she had stolen in high-school. She laughed every time she saw them. For whatever reason, her mother was afraid of them. That kept her hiding space under the floor of the closet private, the purpose of her visit. Cathy Chegoffgan pulled out an empty cardboard box, put the box on the bed, and went back to the closet. She ducked down under the "ecclesiastical garments," and dislodged two of the floor boards coming up with a small, locked, metal strongbox. She punched in the combination, popped open the lid, and took out an object wrapped in a black T-shirt. It was a 38 caliber revolver, and a small box of shells.
The year before he died, Robert Chegoffgan had found the old water-poof strongbox alongside the river near their house. Inside was 500 dollars in cash, a newspaper from 1944, a payroll stub from the North Winterborn Munitions Company, also dated in 1944, and the old revolver, which he had had cleaned up and oiled before giving it to his daughter as a present. Sadly he had given it to her far too early. But her Chegoffgan's grandfather had given her lessons in marksmanship along with lessons in how to take photographs and how to develop film, and she had become, over the past decade, a fairly good shot, even though, unlike most people in Poison Springs, she never bragged about it. In spite of what she had done, throwing the gun away would have been unthinkable. It had been the last thing her father had given her, and, as strange as it seemed, the very last connection between them. The police had confiscated the 9mm for evidence, and her mother had eventually thrown it away. But she still had the old 38.
She brought the 38 caliber revolver back to the bed, wrapped it up back up in the t-shirt, wrapped the t-shirt in one of the ecclesiastical garments, and put the ecclesiastical garment in the cardboard box along with the magazine cover and newspaper clippings. She took her keys out of her pocket and got ready to leave. But she frowned when she heard the front door slam, then open, then slam again. She threw the two books on top and put the box under her arm. She walked back out into the living room.
Mary Chegoffgan bore some resemblance to her daughter, but little of the younger woman's good looks remained. With her stringy red hair, eyes constantly darting from place to place, disheveled clothes, and an expression of pain on her face, she looked very much like the sick, unhappy woman she was. As she became conscious that her daughter was in the room, however, Mary Chegoffgan pulled herself together. She brushed back her hair. Her face assumed a placid expression. She walked into the kitchen and began to tidy things up.
"Cathy, could I ask you a question?"
"You just did."
"What do you mean?"
“Asking me if I mind if you asked me a question is a question. So why ask?"
"You know what I mean. Do you always have to be so difficult?"
"That's two questions."
"OK. Forget about it."
"OK."
"By the way Cathy, I was wondering."
"We all wonder sometimes mom. It's part of the human condition."
"I was wondering what happened to the pictures and newspaper clippings on
the refrigerator."
"Boko Haram took them. They're planning on selling a few local girls into white slavery in the Middle East and they needed them for the fall catalog."
"Would you be serious for one second?"
"That's three questions and I still haven't given my permission."
"Can you answer me?"
"Four. I took them."
"Can I ask why?"
"No."
“You were such a beautiful little girl back then. You looked more like an angel than a human being. You could have been anything you wanted."
"I'm exactly what I want."
"You are? I thought you wanted to become a teacher, or a psychotherapist, or a nun."
"First I have to become an adult. It's why I took the photo down. It was starting to creep me out. You know, I think most of the shit I've done over the past decade I did to prove I wasn't like that picture."
"I think reading all of that psychology is going to your head."
"I think you kept that photo up just to make me hate myself."
"Don't be ridiculous. You're the only one who hates yourself. Everybody knows it was an accident, and if you wanted your father dead back then it was his fault, not yours."
"What do you mean?"
"I saw a TV show on the Lifetime Channel the other day. The father got a little too close to his 13 year old daughter and his wife killed him. It wasn't like he didn't deserve it."
"Don't even go there."
"Don't even go where?"
"You know my father never molested me."
"You read all those psychology books. Do you think you might have had some kind of subconscious aggression against him?"
"I was 10."
"10 year old kids can be monsters."
"I thought you said I was an angel."
“Just take the photo."
"I'm entitled to."
Mary Chegoffgan pressed her hand up against her cheek, having lost all her desire to continue the quarrel.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I forget your birthday."
"Don't worry about my birthday. My parole being over is the best present I can get."
"We should to go dinner together."
"How are you going to eat? Did you go to the dentist like I told you?"
"I gargled with salt water yesterday and it feels better."
Her daughter put the box down on the floor, went into the bathroom, and came out with two bottles of pills.
"Salt water has nothing to do with it," she said, holding up the pills in an accusatory manner. "George has been giving you these again, hasn't he?"
"You say that in such an accusatory manner."
Cathy Chegoffgan let out a long, slow, heavy sigh. She went into the kitchen, opened up both jars of pills, poured them into the sink, and turned on the garbage disposal. She took out her smart phone, dialed, had a brief conversation, and began scribbling in a notepad. She put the paper up on the refrigerator with a magnet, came back out and sat down next to her mother on the couch.
"I rescheduled the appointment for 10 AM."
Mary Chegoffgan put her hand back up to her cheek.
"You could at least have saved me some to get through tonight." she said.
Her daughter put four tablets of Vicodin down on the table.
"I did."
Mary Chegoffgan down on the couch and turned on the TV set.
"I'm afraid to go to the dentist," she said, switching from Fox, to MSNBC, to the Lifetime Channel, then back to Fox. "I'm not doing it to spite you."
"People die from abscessed teeth."
"Now you're being melodramatic. And if it's so bad how can I drive?"
"George works nights. I'm going to ask him to give you a ride."
Mary Chegoffgan looked down, resigned to the idea of getting the tooth pulled. She picked up two tablets of Vicodin, put them in her mouth, swallowed them without any water, and resumed switching channels. Her daughter, her features softening, moved over on the couch.
"I'm sorry," she said, putting her arms around her mother. "I just don't like seeing you in pain. The best possible birthday present you can give me is to stop being in pain."
"That's OK," Mary Chegoffgan said, sitting back, relaxing as though the pills had already begun to have an effect, and staring at the TV. "I'll go with George tomorrow."
“I won't. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Goodbye. You're really a good daughter to think of me. Most kids your age only think of themselves. Thank you. Please don't mind me. I really like this show. You should stay and watch it."
Cathy Chegoffgan, who knew from long experience that once her mother looked at the TV with that far off, vacant stare it was useless to attempt any more conversation, picked up the box, and went outside. She put the box in the trunk of her car, and slammed the door, looking at the little blue house, and realizing, by the progression of the shadows near her father's image, that it was exactly 8:30 in the morning. For a moment, she contemplated taking the banner down and putting it in the box along with the newspaper clippings, but then concluded that since it wasn't her image, it wasn't her decision.
She turned around. Directly across the street, in front of a double lot with a big house that had taken the place of two tear downs, was a man preparing to raise a big American flag. She dashed across the street, and vaulted his low slung, chain link fence so quickly he did not see her coming. She shoved him from behind. When he turned around, he revealed himself to be a man in his late 40s with blue eyes that looked out through narrow slits in his brown, leathery skin, and a neatly trimmed goatee. There was a slight Mongolian cast to his features. It was indeed George Kozlowski. She snatched the flag out of his hand, threw it down on the ground, and stepped on it.
"Fuck you. Good morning."
He bent over, picked up the flag, and brushed it off.
"I like your shirt," he said, looking at anarchist A and "Stitches for Snitches" logo. "Did you get it in that biker bar?"
"Care to guess what I found in my mom's medicine cabinet?"
"Razor blades? Band-Aids? Vicks Vapor Rub?"
"How many times have we had this discussion?"
"Your mother asked me for them," Kozlowski said, continuing to brush off the flag. "How could I refuse? The woman's in pain."
"You're going to get her arrested."
"For a couple of jars of Vicodin? Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not joking around with you George. This is the very, very last time we're having this conversation."
"OK," he said, tying the flag up in the rope and raising it. "I won't give your mother any more Vicodin, no matter how hard she begs. I'll just slam the door in her face. When my best friend's wife howls in pain, I'll turn away and declare that no, I'm not my sister's keeper."
"George. I am going to punch you in the face just to demonstrate to you what causes a toothache. Why did you let her talk you out of taking her to the dentist?"
"She told me she drove herself. She told me the Vicodin was for migraines."
"You should know by now not to believe anything my mother tells you."
"I'm sorry."
"I rescheduled her dentist appointment for 10AM tomorrow. Can you take her?"
"Of course I can take her. Why didn't you just ask? Wouldn't that have been better than shoving me and stepping on my flag and cursing in my face?"
"Are you sure?"
"I give you my word."
"And you're not going to let her talk you out of it?"
"10 o'clock. She'll be there."
Cathy Chegoffgan turned to walk back to her car, but then came back.
Thank you. Thank you George. I'm sorry. I know my mother is a difficult woman."
"You know your mother is not as difficult as you think she is," Kozlowski said, securing the rope. "She worries about you. This is a dangerous town, especially that neighborhood where you live."
"You mean I'm just a skinny little white girl some black guy some Mexican guy's going to drag
me into an alley and rape me. Yeah. I've heard it all before. It's a lot of projection if you ask me. A white guy wants to rape a white girl. So he imagines a black or Hispanic guy doing it instead."
George Kozlowski laughed.
"I am not a racist, and you're not as smart as you think you are." he said.
"You're a misogynist. How's that for a new SAT word?"
"I'm a realist. I got mugged last Friday."
She laughed out loud, snorting through her nose.
"You flash your gold around so much I'm tempted to rob you myself."
"Thank God young Martin Ruiz speaks Spanish so he heard what they were planning."
George Kozlowski, who had known Cathy Chegoffgan ever since he had driven her mother to the hospital when she went into labor while Robert Chegoffgan was working the night shift, and who could, therefore, read most of her expressions, was surprised at her initial reaction to the words "young Martin Ruiz." She seemed startled. She held up her finger to indicate that he should wait, went up onto his front porch, picked up his copy of the Winterborn Daily Post, brought it back, and turned to page 11. There was a short article by Dan Grossinger. The accompanying photo was not flattering. Avellanos's masculine features, the square jaw and heavy brows, gave him a slightly sinister, even criminal appearance.
"This guy? You work with this guy?”
"That's him, but he looks like a serial killer in that picture. He much better looking than that."
"You work at WillyMart? Since when?"
"Since I got fired from my gas company job. I was going to introduce you two. He's always telling me not to flash my gold around too. He's probably going to get fired now."
She frowned.
"Is he helping you with your little pill smuggling business?"
“I do not have a pill smuggling business, and no. He's not helping me with it, but now everybody knows who his sister is."
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