The Girl From Blind River

by Gale Massey

  Mack Dyson, the pawn shop’s owner, came out of the Main Street diner cleaning his large teeth with a toothpick. He was a tidy man with thick-soled shoes and vacant eyes. Everything about him seemed bland until he smiled, and then he resembled the Doberman he kept chained at the back door of his store. The dog lived out there during the day and inside the store at night.

  They stopped at the diner and Toby shaded his eyes, looking through the plate-glass window.

  Dyson walked the twenty feet from the diner to his store. As he went inside, he called back to them, “She’s out sick today.”

  Jamie hated that everyone in town knew they were Phoebe’s kids.

  “Damn. I wanted a burger.”

  “We’ll get something from the 7-Eleven. Myers still has my last paycheck.”

  He pulled a box out of his jacket pocket and opened it to show Jamie. “Her birthday’s tomorrow.”

  It was a silver chain with a tiny cross on it. “You bought her a necklace?”

  “Well, I didn’t steal it.” He snapped the box shut and stuck it back in his pocket. “It’ll make her happy.”

  “Try not getting your ass expelled from school before you graduate,” she said, and started walking. “That might make her happier.”

  “Like you should talk. Try not getting your ass sent up for grand theft.”

  He turned up the street taking long angry strides. He’d grown a couple of inches this year, his cheeks losing some of their roundness. The peach fuzz was gone from his chin and she figured he’d shaved that morning, maybe for the first time ever. She followed behind, letting him cool off.

  When they got to the 7-Eleven, Myers was behind the cash register. “I saw you out back the other day, you know. You got balls coming in here after that.”

  “Wasn’t me. I’ve been out of town,” she said.

  Toby went straight to the back and grabbed two hotdogs off the grill.

  “Uh-huh,” Myers said. He reached, blank-faced, under the counter where she knew he kept a pistol. Jamie froze. For an instant she thought he might pull the gun on them. He could say he thought they were robbing him and no one would be able to prove different. All the cops that came in here every morning to buy coffee and cigarettes, they were all his friends. So, who would take their side if he shot either of them right now?

  He pulled his hand out from beneath the counter and held up an envelope. “Your last paycheck.”

  Jamie stared at the envelope feeling ridiculous, letting the air reenter her lungs.

  Toby filled a Big Gulp cup, drank half of it, and refilled.

  “Hey,” Myers snapped. “It’s not a goddamn water fountain.”

  She looked at the amount of the check. He’d docked her for a uniform she’d spilled grease on and twice because she forgot to mop the floor. She slid it back across the counter. “Just cash it.”

  “Take it to the bank.” He rang up their drinks.

  “Come on.” She pushed the check toward him on the counter. “It’s fifty-two dollars.”

  Myers folded his arms over his chest. “No.”

  “You want to get paid for this stuff? ’Cause we’re broke.”

  He shook his head hopelessly and searched his pocket for a pen. “Sign it then.” He took the cash, less the sodas and hotdogs, from the till and slapped them on the counter. “Got a new guy for the morning shift. A good worker, does everything I ask.”

  “That right?” Jamie said, stuffing the money into her pocket. Toby walked to the door and pushed it open.

  “That’s right,” Myers said. “Goes to show you really can still find decent help these days.”

  She smirked. She had definitely not been decent help. Her heart wasn’t in it. Never had been. She didn’t want to be good at a minimum-wage job that would keep her stuck in this town. She wanted to be good at something that would get her the hell out of here.

  Toby held the door for her and she briefly glimpsed the man he might become. He muttered, “I bet he bends over for him, too,” and she laughed.

  He spit on the sidewalk, stepped on the splat, and ground it with his boot. “Let’s cut through the woods.”

  “As long as you don’t fuck around on the tracks.”

  Sleet was beginning to fall. Jamie put her stocking cap on, and even though she hated walking beside the tracks when the afternoon train was due, she followed him. They took the south end of the trail through the woods and in a few minutes were walking alongside the tracks.

  “Who’d you go to Mimawa with?”

  “Jack.”

  “What the fuck, Jamie? That’s your way out, right there.”

  “Blame Jack? No. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re back to doing the right thing, are we? He was there, right? It would take the heat off you. You, meaning us.”

  Jamie sipped her soda, debating the idea quietly.

  “Mom went there once,” Toby said.

  “Where? Mimawa? Huh-uh. That was Atlantic City. Remember, she brought you that T-shirt with the dice on it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The dice.”

  “Why’d she go there anyway?” he asked.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, why’d she go to Atlantic City?”

  “I don’t know. Probably met a guy,” Jamie said, but she wasn’t really sure.

  “Which one?”

  “Elvin, you know, the one with the Camaro.”

  “Oh, man, that was a nice car.”

  “You remember that? You were so little then.”

  His eyes darted back and forth as he searched his mind for the memory. “It was red with yellow flames on the side. Man, I loved that car.”

  Jamie nodded, though the car had been green. She remembered that guy and all the others Phoebe had brought home. Toby had fallen for every one of them. But that was before Phoebe went to prison and they ended up sharing that room in the back of Loyal’s trailer.

  A mile out, the train sounded like distant thunder. In another minute it would come barreling around the bend, just fifty yards away.

  Jamie said, “Come on,” and walked down into the gully.

  Toby stayed on the tracks, turned around and faced the direction of the train, spread his arms Christlike, and raised his face to the sky. She hated when he fucked around like this, hated him for needing such a rush.

  “Get off!”

  The train came into view, hurtling toward him.

  She screamed.

  He opened his eyes and smiled. The conductor leaned out the window and tugged on the horn. A screeching wind boomed down the gully as Toby jumped off the tracks. He hit the ground, rolled into her, and took her out at the knees. The train whipped past them, pinning their hair to their heads while the conductor shook his fist at them, mouthing something like fucking kids.

  “You’re a goddamn ass,” she screamed, but he was curled in a ball at the bottom of the gully laughing too hard to breathe.

  CHAPTER

  9

  JAMIE AND TOBY were drenched with melted sleet by the time they got home. The sun had set and it was freezing inside the trailer. Out of habit she started cleaning: bagging garbage, emptying bottles and food wrappers that Toby could never seem to throw out on his own. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and parked in front of a space heater that glowed so red-hot at its center they sometimes used it to toast marshmallows. Toby turned on the TV and flipped through the channels until he found bare-knuckle cage fighting, his favorite. She set the garbage outside the back door and rounded up his clothes and the other crap he’d left around the living room and hauled it to his cot in the back room.

  Loyal’s room was shut. She twisted the doorknob thinking that blackmail wasn’t completely out of the question or that maybe she’d come across some old family heirloom she could hawk at the pawn shop, but she’d scoured his room a hundred times and it was the same pigsty as always. The place stank of unwashed bedclothes and moldy carpet. His shotgun leaned in one corner, several cartons o
f shells stacked beside it on the floor. She’d priced that shotgun on eBay before and knew that even with the cartons of bullets it wasn’t worth enough to cover the cost of shipping. She checked the box he kept under his bed and found his collection of nudie postcards from his buddy begging him to ditch Blind River and get on down to Key West, the small black lockbox she’d never been able to pick, a snapshot of him and her father when they were boys, one of the grandparents she’d never met, and a new bank statement she was tempted to open but didn’t because the seal hadn’t been broken yet. Sometimes there was cash, but not today. She heard the rumbling of engines outside, and Toby yelled, “You better get out of there before he comes inside.”

  By the time the engines cut off, she was in the kitchen wiping out dirty ashtrays.

  Toby, glued to a blood fight on TV, said, “I hope he’s got pizza.”

  Outside, Loyal yelled for him to open the door.

  “I got it,” Jamie said, and opened the door, stepping behind it to let him through. He had a case of beer under each arm.

  Two more cars pulled in. The Monday night crowd was made up of Dan Remsen, who owned a gun shop on the north side of town; Charlie Creel from the liquor store; and two other men she’d seen but hardly ever spoken to. These were men Loyal had grown up with and in whose stores he kept some of his gaming machines. And then there was creepy Mike Tuckahoe who came in carrying six boxes of pizza. She hated the guy. They stomped their boots, grunted halfhearted threats at each other, and filled the trailer with the cold, musky smell of seldom washed winter coats. Just as she’d hoped, they’d arrived at the same time as Loyal.

  When her uncle noticed her standing behind the door, he dropped the beer on the counter. “Where you been?” He made that scowl that used to scare her when she was little.

  She hated when he made faces and opened the freezer, pretending to look for ice. “Oh, sorry about the other night. I got hung up.”

  “Keating hired you for the night and you’re telling me you got hung up?”

  “But Mom showed, so no problem, right?”

  He slammed the freezer door shut, barely missing her nose. “Who were you with?”

  “Jack.” Shit. She’d meant to play this differently.

  “What the fuck you doing with him?” His eyes narrowed and she saw the possibilities snapping together in his brain. Across the room, Toby was shaking his head at her.

  “We went to Mimawa.” Every time she opened her mouth, things got worse.

  “You went to the casino instead of doing what I told you?” He took a step toward her. “With my money? Goddamn.” He balled up his fist and pressed it against her jaw.

  “Traffic was worse than I expected. I couldn’t get back in time.”

  “Now you’re lying.”

  He’d never done more than slap her before now, but she’d never lied right to his face. She backed against the freezer.

  “You blew it, didn’t you?”

  “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I lost it.” If she pushed his fist away, it would only make him angrier.

  “Lost it. That’s what you call it?” His spittle splashed on her cheek. She could barely meet his eyes, but then she spotted Dan moving in slowly on her right.

  “Hey, now.” He stepped between them and put his hand on Loyal’s chest. “Take it easy, man. She’s just a girl.”

  Mike Tuckahoe opened a pizza box and stuffed half a slice in his mouth. He stared at Jamie’s chest. “Yeah, she’s just a girl.”

  Loyal dropped his hand. “We’ll finish this later.”

  The worst was not over, but if he let her play it might give her a chance to prove she could make back the money. “Maybe I could sit in on the game,” she said.

  “No room,” Loyal said.

  “Willie’s not coming,” Dan said. “She can have his seat.”

  Loyal shot him a look but said nothing, so Jamie took a chair.

  “Me too?” Toby got off the couch.

  “Not happening. Count out the chips if you want to play, Jamie. It’s another five if you want pizza.”

  Jamie got the last of her cash from her pocket. Loyal nabbed her money off the table. “The pot’s four hundred, winner take all.”

  Toby went back to the couch with his pizza and surfed the channels.

  “Turn that down, Toby,” Loyal said. He pushed the cards to Jamie. “You deal.”

  The game moved slowly until the food was gone. She folded her hand for the first round so she could get the feel of the group. They played old style, like she expected, limping in for cheap, hoping to hit the flop, folding every time the pot got raised.

  “That VA tournament’s coming up, isn’t it?” Dan asked. He’d been a part of the group for five years even though he’d never won and Loyal often called him a donkey to his face. He was usually the first player to bounce out.

  “Saturday,” Loyal said.

  “What’s the buy-in this year?”

  “A thousand.” She knew Dan would never play for that much money.

  “Goes up every year,” Dan said.

  “It’s been a thousand for three years,” Loyal said. “Takes a lot of work to put that thing on.” He crushed a beer can in his hand.

  Jamie knew better, though. He’d run the tournament so long it wasn’t work anymore. Make a few phone calls, rent some tables, and hire a few dealers to come in from Mimawa. No advertising necessary because the locals couldn’t wait for this event. She’d been watching the show for years and knew he took a big rake. But nobody seemed to care. Not even the vets. Everyone got lunch, free beer, and a chance at one big prize. It generated goodwill among the local boys who had actually served their country.

  “Got a surprise this year.” Loyal twisted the top off a new bottle of Jack. “Got a big celebrity coming. Good player, too.”

  Charlie said, “I heard TJ Bangor speak at the Methodist church. That the guy?”

  “That’s the guy,” Loyal said. He swigged the whiskey from the bottle and set it on the table.

  “Oh, man. He’s huge, big as a door and still in awesome shape. Everyone wanted to see his ring, though, and he didn’t have it on. Said he’d left it home on accident. I might scrape up enough to try my hand against him. Rich guy like that, though, probably plays high stakes all the time.”

  Sleet turned to ice and struck the roof hypnotically. “Sounds bad out there,” Dan said.

  The chatter quieted while the men cocked their ears to the ceiling and murmured their agreements.

  An hour into the game, the beer was gone and Toby was snoring on the couch. Loyal hadn’t said a word to her but Jamie felt his eyes on her each time she shuffled. She made a point of keeping her hands on the table where everyone could see them. She kept an eye on him, too, hoping to see it when he marked an ace because she’d never known him not to find a way to cheat. A few good pots came her way, and she made enough bluffs to build a decent stack.

  By nine o’clock the ice had stopped falling and the room was warm. Jamie cracked a window to let in some fresh air. In another ten minutes three players had run out of luck and gone home. It was down to her, Loyal, and Dan.

  She had the lead but she knew better than to bully Loyal in front of Dan. She folded three hands in a row, trying to pit them against each other. The next hand Dan busted Loyal’s trips by hitting a straight on the river. Loyal glared at the cards, pushed his chair back, and joined Toby on the couch to catch the local news.

  “Go easy on me,” Dan said, and gathered up the cards to shuffle.

  She needed this win and shuffled the deck until she felt the corner of one of the aces that Loyal had bent and dealt it to Dan. Any ace and she knew he’d go all in.

  It was fifty-fifty luck, the kind of luck she knew to bet on, and she paired a ten on the river.

  “Sorry, man.”

  Dan shook his head. He pushed away from the table and grabbed his jacket. “It’s okay. The wife won’t like me out in this weather anyway.”

  At the door h
e covered his head with his jacket and ran to his truck. She went to the porch, watched the mud fly at his feet, braced when she heard Loyal’s footsteps come up behind her. He stepped outside and lit a cigarette. There was nowhere to go. The halogen lights of Dan’s truck backing out of the driveway hit Loyal’s face, lighting the gray scruff on his cheek, the jowls that sagged beneath his jaw. Dan’s lights turned up the road. She knew the worst was coming, hoped it would pass quick.

  When the truck was out of sight, Loyal grabbed her wrist and held it at an angle. Pain shot up her arm. One time he’d twisted Toby’s arm hard enough to crack it in half. She waited for the snap.

  “You know I’m going to have to cover this, don’t you? If Keating realizes you ever even thought about stealing from him, you’ll be in his cross hairs for the rest of your life.”

  Jamie winced and grabbed his fingers, but he was too strong. “I thought I could cover it.”

  “It didn’t belong to you.”

  “I’d won some online. I needed a new computer. The money never came because the feds shut down the site.” She tried to keep the pleading tone out of her voice. Pleading never set well with Loyal.

  “You played poker online and were fool enough to think you wouldn’t get cheated?”

  “I won four hundred here tonight,” she said, keeping her eyes level with his. “It’s a start. I’ll pay it back. Every dime of it. I will.”

  He squeezed her fingers into a fist and white pain filled her brain so fast she couldn’t breathe.

  “What does Jack have to do with this?”

  “You’re going to break my fingers.” She tried to twist her hand free, but he gripped her fist tighter. She couldn’t look him in the eye. “We tried to win it back.”

  Pain crept up her arm, beyond her shoulder, into her throat.

  He landed an open hand on the side of her face and shoved her into the door frame. The back of her head smacked the wall. Pain like lightning seized her arm. She thought of Toby because if he saw this now, he’d jump in between them. She slumped to the porch floor and pulled her hand to her chest, trying to unfold her fingers and listening to see if the noise had woken him up. Loyal had never been this rough with her but it was all her fault.