As we stood outside in the sun, I heard the younger deputy say, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I got a gun over here, Delbert. There’s a gun over here with blood on it.”
4
WAVY
Of course Kellen said, “It’s gonna be okay.” He didn’t want me to be scared, but Mama was dead. Not Sad Mama or Good Mama or Scary Mama ever again. Just Dead Mama. And Donal was missing. And Kellen was in handcuffs.
The cops took us to the hospital, where I saw Mr. Cutcheon in the parking lot. He waved at me, but Aunt Brenda wouldn’t let me go to him. The hospital smelled like disinfectant and sadness, like when Mama and Donal had their wreck. In a white room with a maze of blue curtains, a nurse said, “How’s she doing? We’re going to have a private exam room for her in a few minutes. Are you her mother?”
“I’m her aunt. Her mother—” Aunt Brenda couldn’t say it. Dead Mama. Always. That was how death worked. Dead Grandma. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the smell of Grandma’s house. I wanted to smell something nice that wasn’t sadness. I pulled my shirt up over my nose. It smelled like Kellen’s sweat. Safe.
Aunt Brenda dragged me into a room with a black table covered in paper.
“Why don’t I take the other girls down to the visitor’s lobby? The candy stripers have magazines and stuff,” another nurse said.
Leslie and Amy looked scared, and their eyes were red from crying. Dead Aunt Val for always, too.
Then Aunt Brenda and the nurse and I were alone in the little room.
“Sweetie, why don’t you let your aunt help you change into this gown, okay?”
It was one of those blue hospital things with strings and no back. Aunt Brenda pulled on my T-shirt, trying to take it off, but I twisted her wrist until she let go.
“Ma’am, does she understand? Have you told her anything?” the nurse said.
“I didn’t know what to tell her. Is it like a pelvic exam?”
“Yeah, like when you have your pap smear. Has she had one before?”
“I don’t think so. She’s only thirteen.”
“Oh, sweetie. Oh, I’m so sorry,” the nurse said.
I hated hearing them talk about me like I was broken. Mama was dead, but I was fine. I knew what “rape” meant and that wasn’t what Kellen had done.
“You know, ma’am, we might give her a sedative. To calm her down.”
“That’s a good idea. She’s pretty nervous about people touching her,” Aunt Brenda said.
I wasn’t going to take any sedative. No pills. No needles. They weren’t going to put anything into me.
“I’ll go get that and maybe while I’m gone you can help her change into the gown.”
The nurse opened the door, and that was all I needed. I dodged around Aunt Brenda, ducked past the nurse, and into the hallway. I was free.
Where to go was the hard part. Not to the shop or Kellen’s house, where the cops might catch me. At the Lutheran Church, a carnival had been set up in the parking lot, which was crowded with people. The air smelled like funnel cakes, heavy and greasy.
No one even noticed me when I sat down in one of the tents, where people were playing bingo. I stayed there all afternoon and into the evening, going from tent to tent. When it started to get dark, a woman came up to me and said, “Are your parents here? Do you need a ride home?”
I shook my head and forced myself to smile and wave as I walked away. The police were still at the shop, but at Kellen’s house, they had gone. The front door and the back door were closed with yellow tape, but the window to the laundry room was open. Balancing on a trash can, I popped out the screen, and crawled inside. The cops had made a mess, dumping things out of drawers.
After I put everything away, I took a shower. All day in the heat had made me sweaty, and I felt sticky between my legs. Wrapping up in a towel, I took my dirty clothes into the laundry room and put them in the hamper. In the dryer were clean clothes, mine and Kellen’s mixed together. I put on a pair of my panties and one of his T-shirts that I liked to sleep in.
When I opened the freezer, I was hoping for ice cream sandwiches, but I found something better. Thirty-one little foam cups of ice cream. On top of each plastic lid, Kellen had written a letter in black marker. Setting them out on the table, I moved them around until I solved the puzzle: HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAVY! I LOVE YOU!
He’d drawn lopsided hearts on the other four cups.
I opened the first one and took a bite. Chocolate with cherries in it.
5
AMY
After Wavy ran away from the hospital, we walked to the police station. Mom asked one of the deputies about our car, but he shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about that, but I expect the DEA will impound everything on the property.”
“The DEA?” Mom said.
“It’s crazy up there. I went out to help with roadblocks and it’s knee-deep in feds.”
“Because of the murders?”
“What? No. Mrs. Newling—there’s—your brother-in-law has a meth lab up there about the size of a—it’s big.”
Mom made all the right noises of shock, but I don’t think it surprised her. After all, she knew what he’d done in the past. Did she really think he was ranching?
Whatever she thought, she was too tired to argue. Leslie was too tired to even whine. The three of us sat in the police station, our backsides going numb on hard plastic chairs, until the sheriff’s wife took us to a motel.
She was a tiny, wiry woman, what I imagined Wavy growing into. Physically, anyway, because the sheriff’s wife filled up dead air with talking. Probably she had to. Mom, Leslie, and I were like zombies, trudging into the motel room.
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Newling. We’ll find your niece and nephew.”
The sheriff’s wife put her hand on Mom’s shoulder, and that’s when she fell apart. The night we found out about Grandma’s cancer was the first time I saw Mom cry, but the night of Wavy’s fourteenth birthday was worse. Mom let the sheriff’s wife hold her, and she cried so hard it shook the bed they were sitting on. Leslie and I just watched. We were cried out. More than anything, I wanted to go home, so I was relieved when the sheriff’s wife said, “Now, have you had a chance to call your husband?”
When Dad answered the phone, Mom went stiff and she didn’t even say hello. She said, “Bill, I need you to come pick up the girls. Something happened with Val.”
He must have said a lot more than hello, because she listened for several minutes. She got up and dragged the phone around to the other bed to sit down facing away from Leslie and me.
“Bill, I need you to drive up to Powell in the morning and pick up the girls. We’re staying at the Blue Moon Motel that’s on the highway into town. Room One-Oh-Seven. Bill, I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. They’re fine.”
She was quiet again, listening, her shoulders tight.
“I don’t care about your stupid meeting! Come get your daughters and take them home!” When she glanced over her shoulder at us, I could see she was getting ready to cry again. “They’re safe, but they want to come home.”
Mom came around the bed and held out the phone. “Tell your father that you’re okay.”
Leslie took the phone and said, “Hi, Daddy.”
“Leslie, are you okay? Your sister’s okay?” I heard my father say.
“We’re okay.”
“What happened? What’s going on?”
“Aunt Val’s dead. And Unc—”
Mom jerked the phone away from Leslie.
“Ow!” Leslie clamped her hand over her ear, and when she pulled it away there was blood on it. Mom had yanked her earring out. Not hard enough to tear the lobe, but hard enough to make it bleed.
“No. You don’t need to come tonight. It’d be after midnight by the time you got here,” Mom said to Dad.
It wasn’t, which meant he’d sped to get there. He didn’t wake us up, because we weren’t sleeping. We had changed into nightgowns donat
ed by church ladies, and crowded together in a bed that smelled of bleach and cigarette smoke. Lying in the dark, we were staring at the ceiling when he pounded on the door.
He’d come straight from work, wrinkled and tired. Pulling all three of us into his arms, he hugged us hard. Usually I hated his stale coffee breath, but that night it was familiar and comforting.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he kept saying. Sitting on the edge of the bed, with Leslie under one arm and me under the other, he listened to Mom tell what had happened. When she was done, he said, “Let’s go home.”
Leslie and I didn’t have to be told twice. We were ready to leave that dark paneled room with the sticky carpet. We picked up the plastic bags that held our clothes and Leslie’s puked-on shoes, ready to go out to Dad’s car in our borrowed nightgowns. I thought of Wavy, going from one place to another, never knowing what stranger’s clothes she’d have to wear.
Mom stayed sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Come on, Brenda. We’ve all had a long day. You don’t want to hear it, but I have to be at work in the morning. Let’s go.”
“I can’t go.”
“Yes, you can, Brenda. There’s nothing you can do here. We can make the funeral arrangements from home.”
“Wavy and Donal are missing. I can’t go. They need me.”
“I’m so sorry about Val, but your daughters need you, too.” Dad jingled his car keys. “The police will find Wavy and Donal and take care of them.”
“What am I supposed to do? I can’t just walk away,” Mom said.
“That’s exactly what you can do. There’s a system in place to take care of kids like Wavy and Donal. There’s a reason I pay through the nose on my taxes, so that when things like this happen, we don’t have to disrupt our lives. So we don’t have to live in the chaos people like Val create. We keep stepping in, but let’s let the system work this time.”
“Are you serious? If something happened to us, is that what you’d want to happen to Leslie and Amy?” Mom stood up, not to come with us, but to fight.
I stood in my socks, on the sidewalk between the room and the car, waiting to see what Dad would do. He stepped out of the motel room and closed the door behind him, leaving Mom alone.
“Get in the car, girls.”
I slept on the drive home, curled up in the front seat. I dreamed in blood that night, speeding through darkness, with Dad’s hand on my back. Aunt Val’s skull ruptured on the kitchen floor in a sea of creeping red. Footprints running away. A trail of blood drops across a concrete floor. A calendar blotter on a desk, with a heart drawn around the nineteenth, and a smear of blood beside it.
6
KELLEN
I knew exactly how Wavy’s birthday would go. I would make her wait at the table with her eyes closed, while I set out the ice cream to spell the message I’d written on the lids. Then I would sit down across from her and say, “Okay, you can look now.”
She would uncover her eyes and stare. The same way the girl at the ice cream place stared at me when I ordered. After she got over the surprise, Wavy would laugh. Stuff like that cracked her up. Then we’d eat ice cream together, even if I had to close my eyes.
After that, I was gonna take her over to the shop to see her real birthday present, the Triumph Terrier. It wasn’t finished yet, but that way she could tell me how she wanted it painted. The guy who sold it to me planned to return it to mint condition, but I had my eye more on the size, only 150 cc. Now that she was fourteen, she could get her learner’s permit, and the bike would let her go where she wanted, when she needed.
Then there would probably be some fooling around. Okay, there was definitely gonna be some fooling around after two weeks apart. Not too fast, but maybe not that slow. I could not stop thinking about the magazine she left on my pillow.
Eventually, I imagined we’d end up lying on the quilt in the meadow and she would name all the stars for me. Last of all, I was gonna say, “Do you really wanna marry me?”
If she said yes, I’d tell her about the conversation I had with Liam.
We were driving back from a deal, and I waited until he was all talked out about business.
“So, what do you want to do about Wavy?” I picked that question because if somebody asked me that, I had an answer.
“Do about her? Is there a problem?” Liam said.
“No, but I was thinking maybe we could make things more official.”
“Didn’t you buy her a ring?”
“Yeah, but I talked to Lyle Broadus. You know, my lawyer on that assault charge over in Garringer. That fight I got into at the drags?”
“Yeah, I remember. Can’t believe he got you probation for turning that guy into hamburger.”
“Well, it was justified. Anyway, Lyle says, once Wavy turns fourteen, we can get married, if you give us permission. It’s just a piece of paper you’d have to sign with a notary, that’s all.”
Liam laughed and shook his head. My stomach went south and I eased up on the accelerator.
“Kellen, as a married man, let me tell you, you don’t want to rush into anything. How old are you? Twenty-five or something? Why are you in such a hurry to tie yourself down? Think about that girl we met at Myrtle Beach last year. The redhead. The one with the tiny, tiny waist and the black leather dress?”
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I had room in my head for about five women: my ma, Wavy, Val, and maybe two of Liam’s girlfriends. Beyond that, I couldn’t keep them straight. I wished Liam would lay off the coke or the meth, whichever one made him talk so fast.
“So, would that be okay? If we got married? You wouldn’t have to do anything except sign that form. It’d be easier for school, too. If Wavy lived with me, she’d be closer to the new high school in Belton County.”
“Does she still go to school? You didn’t finish school, did you?”
“No, but Wavy’s a lot smarter than me.”
“No offense, but that’s not saying much. She’s a little slow.” Liam laughed. “I tried to teach her to read and never got anywhere.”
“You know I’d treat her good. You wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
Liam fumbled around in his shirt pocket for the coke. “Can’t talk you out of it, can I? You’re like a—you know in those Budweiser commercials—you’re like a big fucking horse with blinders on. I’m trying to expand your horizons, introduce you to girls, and you got your eye on that weird little runt. Does she even talk to you? Seriously, don’t lie, now, you sad sack of shit, does she talk to you?”
“Yeah, she talks to me.”
“That’s something.” Liam took a snort and, after he put the coke away, laid his hand on my shoulder. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. Get me whatever paper I gotta sign and we’ll get you a ball and chain. How would you feel about a honeymoon in Colorado? I need you to make a run for me next week.”
I wasn’t gonna tell Wavy what Liam said about her being weird or slow. I’d just say, “I talked to Liam and he signed off on the form. If you really wanna marry me, we can apply for the license tomorrow.”
Honestly, I figured on her saying yes.
Didn’t figure on spending her birthday in the county jail. When I was younger, me and the sheriff had some run-ins, but not in a while. If we saw each other on the street, I’d say, “Sheriff Grant,” and the sheriff’d say, “Junior.” Which was what we said to each other when he walked into the interview room. He looked about as confused as I felt, but I played by Wavy’s rule: wait.
The sheriff sat down and lit a cigarette, held the pack out to me. I shook my head.
“Junior, we got ourselves a real situation. I don’t guess I have to tell you that, but I need to know what in Hell happened today.”
“Not much ’til this afternoon. Roger was sharpening a lawnmower blade and managed to cut the tip of his finger off. Mr. Cutcheon took him up to county hospital, and I stayed at the shop. After they left, Wavy showed up.”
&n
bsp; “That’s the Quinn girl?”
“Yep. Her aunt dropped her off, and a couple hours later her aunt came back. That’s when I found out something had happened up at Quinn’s place.”
“Junior, it seems to me you’re leaving out a whole bunch of stuff there in the middle. The aunt told my deputy that girl was bare-ass naked on your desk.”
I wanted not to blush so bad, but it came creeping up outta my collar. “Yeah, we were fooling around. But she’s my fiancée. I bought her a ring, and her daddy gave me permission to marry her. Got the letter from the judge, notarized and everything.”
“Don’t lie to me, Junior. You don’t want to go down that road. Even if I could make heads or tails of what’s left of that letter, the fact is, the girl’s not your wife. Age of consent’s sixteen, and her aunt is real goddamn upset, talking about pressing charges. So you need to tell me exactly what you were doing.”
“It went a little further than it should have. I know that. But it didn’t go all the way. I wouldn’t do that. We’re gonna get married and all.” I felt bad enough how far it did go, because I was sincere about wanting to marry her first.
“Okay. I’m glad to hear that, but the situation with the Quinn girl is the least of your worries. I’ve also got a gun that my deputy found in your shop. Now, we don’t know for sure yet, but my suspicion is that’s the gun used to kill Liam and Valerie Quinn. So you tell me, how’d the gun end up there?”
“I don’t know.” I knew that gun was gonna end up in front of me to explain. “After Roger and Cutcheon left, the phone in the office rang. I went in to answer it, ’cause we’d left a message for Roger’s wife, thought it was her. While I was on the phone, Wavy came in. She closed the office door and the window blinds, but the garage doors stayed open. Anybody coulda walked in there.”
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Page 22