Free Verse

by Sarah Dooley

  I don’t see much of Mikey, though. Once in a while his face pops up in the window I’m washing, and then he darts away and hides under the bed. I can see his filthy feet sticking out.

  When I’m not working for my cousin Hubert, squirreling money away for a purchase I need to make, I walk up West Lane to the pawnshop. The middle of the store is all taken up with jewelry: watches, wedding bands, class rings with old years on them. The edges of the store are music: trumpets, banjos, one harp—and the prettiest guitars I’ve ever seen.

  I strum the strings, and their music makes me think of Phyllis, of the way her singing sounded when I first moved into her house. I wish I’d known her better then. If I knew her better, I’d have sat on my hands. I’d have kept myself under control, no matter what song she sang. Even if it was Judy’s song.

  I wish I knew how to do more than strum. I think that if I earn enough money working for Hubert Harless, maybe I can buy two guitars, and maybe Phyllis will teach me.

  • • •

  I start thinking of it as a GUI-tar, which is how Phyllis says it. I know I can’t leave town until she’s got one in her hands. Every day when I get off the school bus, I go and stare at the one I want to buy her. Phyllis watches for me from the porch, and every day I tell her a different reason for why the bus was a little late. Traffic. A deer in the road. Stuck behind a tractor.

  The first day I was late, she panicked. She called the school. They were already on the radio with the bus driver before I got home, and he assured them he had dropped me off in one piece. After my escape to Cary Fork my first day back at school, Phyllis isn’t taking any chances. But she also doesn’t want to meet me at the bus stop, because I told her the other kids will tease me if they see her. A seventh grader is too old to be walked home by a grown-up. The kids at school already think I’m weird, with my visits to Mr. Powell and my history of violence. Getting picked up at the bus stop like I can’t find my own way home would be the last straw.

  The GUI-tar I’ve picked out for Phyllis looks a lot like her old one, but it’s shinier. I’ve looked at the price tag several times, willing the numbers to get smaller. I’ve also tried staring squint-eyed at my cousin, willing the money he pays me to get bigger.

  “You having eye trouble?” he asks.

  It’s going to be a while before Phyllis has a GUI-tar.

  I’m a little worried, anyway, that when she gets it, she won’t want to play it anymore. At least not when I’m around. But I can only fix one problem at a time.

  7

  Spring comes to Caboose in patches. First, there are three or four days at a time of warm weather, followed by snowstorms that keep my pockets fat from all the walkways I’m shoveling for Hubert. The April weather is all mixed up. There are flower petals scattered across snow while thunder rumbles over the mountains, like the weather just can’t make up its mind what season to be. For the most part, I’m settling in at Phyllis’s, but my moods are a lot like the weather. Some days I’m springtime warm and hopeful, lying on the porch with the sun on my face. Other days, grief for Michael blows through me like a cold wind, thundering for me to go, to get out, to move.

  The first summer-warm day comes on a Thursday in April, too early to be convincing, but welcome anyway. It’s over eighty and so nice that they ought to let us skip school to enjoy it, but no such luck. I’m looking forward to a quick stop at the pawnshop and a long afternoon on the porch, but on the school bus, I start hearing whispers about why there’s extra traffic in and out of Caboose. Kids are on their phones and looking online, passing stories back and forth. Nobody talks to me, but I don’t have to be popular to pick up on the word accident. Despite the weather, I rub my hands up and down my arms to chase away the chill.

  I skip the pawnshop, and by the time I’ve made it a quarter mile from the bus stop, I’m jogging. Hubert’s home early, just pulling in as I make it to the driveway. I stand on the porch and watch my cousin go in. He slams his truck door and roars a curse when the seat belt jams in the door. On his way up the steps, he kicks the porch railing and knocks loose one of the sturdy nails we just put in. I can’t help thinking he’s never quite looked so kin to me as he does right now.

  He disappears inside without so much as a glance my way. I watch his screen door slam shut with a bounce before I head into Phyllis’s house. She’s standing in front of the TV, in the middle of the living room, even though she’s not two paces from a chair.

  “Oh,” she says when she sees me. “It’s already time for you?” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which stray back to the TV after only a second.

  The man on TV is talking about an accident at the Dogwood mine. He talks about how many things we don’t know yet: how many miners, and whether they’re hurt or worse than that. He doesn’t seem to know much of anything for sure. His cameraman angles toward flashing lights all clustered on the gravel road that leads out to Dogwood. You can’t see past the fence.

  “It’s terrible,” Phyllis says. She makes a noise with her mouth, the same one she made the day I broke her guitar. “Just terrible. Almighty.”

  I think of Ben. I hurt. “Did people die in the mine today?” Like there’s a chance she knows something more than the TV guy.

  “They ain’t told us yet, Sasha.”

  The man on TV dressed better than any of the men he’s praying for. I picture the view from his neighbor’s porch. The door would open and a serious-looking man in a suit would walk out. No scrub-brush beard. No friendly wave. No tripping over baby shoes. No coveralls. He probably doesn’t even come out of his house before eight. If he were my neighbor, I would leave for school every day without ever seeing him.

  I think about Hubert, about how we were supposed to work on cleaning the outbuilding today. I wonder if the Dogwood mine is going to close. If it closes, Hubert won’t have any place to work. He might not be able to pay me, and then I’ll never be able to afford a GUI-tar for Phyllis.

  “I hope Hubert doesn’t lose his job,” I say.

  “Lord above, Hubert,” Phyllis whispers, without taking her eyes off the screen.

  “He looked mad when he came in,” I say.

  Her head whips around. “He’s home?”

  “He came in cussing from the truck. Just now.”

  “God Almighty.” She sinks into her rocker, lifts herself back up, and swipes her knitting yarn out of the seat before sinking down again. “God Almighty.”

  The TV is showing footage now from somebody’s shaky cell phone camera. There is sunshine. There are flashing fire-truck lights. I stare and stare at the fire-truck lights. In front of them, a woman with her hair in a messy bun says her husband didn’t want to go back to the mines, not after the big collapse. She doesn’t have to explain, because we all know she means five years ago; we all know she means Hardwater, the collapse that killed Ben. She says her husband wanted to take classes on how to fix computers, but they had bills. They had babies. He didn’t have that freedom. She twists and twists her hands. She says she’s holding out hope.

  The camera cuts back to the man in the suit. He shakes his head slowly. His mouth tightens into a straight line. “We’re all holding out hope,” he says, without a speck of hope anywhere in his voice. He sounds like he already knows he’s going to be reporting a different headline in a day or two, one without any hope left. Across the screen, red block letters pop up, in case anybody’s just tuning in: THREE WEST VIRGINIA MINERS TRAPPED BENEATH GROUND.

  And over his shoulder, the flag, and on it, our state motto: Montani Semper Liberi. Mountaineers are always free.

  8

  Me and Michael stayed up so late that Tuesday that Wednesday came and we were still on the couch.

  “Michael?” The TV was on, had been on for hours, but my voice still sounded loud in the room.

  “What.” He was distracted, didn’t even look at me, and there was no question in his voice.
I wasn’t sure he even realized I was talking, so I wrapped my fingers around his forearm.

  “Michael.”

  Now he forced his throat clear as he turned to look at me. We hadn’t bothered turning on the overheads, and in the dim light from the TV, his face looked lined and tired, shining with sweat. He looked older than I’d ever seen him look. “What, Lightbulb?” His childhood nickname for me, because I had so many bad ideas, like dropping glass dishes or dressing up the cat.

  Now that I had his attention, I couldn’t remember what my question was. Maybe I didn’t have one at all. Maybe the silence was getting to me and I needed his attention, even if I didn’t have anything to say. I swallowed, pinned by his painful gaze.

  “Can I stay home from school today?”

  He laughed a little, a sad laugh like he didn’t understand the question. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, let’s, uh . . . let’s stay home and clean up the place, huh?”

  We did. We cleaned every last inch of the apartment. Michael vacuumed while I scrubbed down the baseboards. While he washed the dishes, I dusted each individual book on the shelf. I shined the windowpanes while my brother scrubbed the toilet. By the time the sun rose, there was no shortage of sparkling-clean surfaces for it to reflect off of. It made the whole place feel strange.

  “Michael?” I asked.

  He swallowed hard. “What?” This time I got the sense he was paying attention to me, so much attention that I couldn’t spit out my original question. I didn’t ask about our father. I didn’t ask what on earth we would do if he really wasn’t coming home.

  “Can I stay home tomorrow, too?” I asked instead.

  He shook his head as he slowly sank back into the couch, gaze finding the TV, where the same headlines cycled again and again, telling us nothing. A map flickered to life, highlighting where our county was in relation to the rest of the state. Not everybody, even within West Virginia, knew we were down here, with our abandoned buildings and our single source of income.

  “No, baby. You have to go back to school tomorrow. You have to get out of this place.” I didn’t know whether he meant our apartment or our town, and I didn’t ask.

  • • •

  I don’t remember deciding to walk from Phyllis’s house to me and Michael’s apartment in the middle of the night. It’s after one. I ought to be sleeping. I sort of wander down the stairs, and once I’m down the stairs, it’s easy to wander out the door, and once I’m out the door, my feet choose a direction. You have to get out of this place. My feet speed up, and gravel rolls under my feet. It’s dark, and the weather has snapped back to cold. The sky is heavy with clouds, and in the glow of each streetlight, I can see my breath for a minute before I plunge back into the dark. Snowflakes cluster under each light, not seeming to fall, only floating in cold clouds. It’s late for snow. From somewhere in my memory, I call up Michael’s term for April snow: blackberry winter. The berries are supposed to grow sweeter if you get a good snow in April.

  Caboose is dead quiet at this hour, but even dead-quiet towns have life. Somebody’s dog is barking, and from one or two windows, I catch a glimmer of TV light. I like the way my bare feet sound on the gravel by the highway. The soft crunch is earthy and it calms me down. I feel like I’m okay here, as long as I don’t stop moving, as long as I never stop moving.

  I end up at home, or at what once was my home. Our apartment was the top floor of this brick house. Although the first-floor windows are dark, I can tell there are still people living behind them. There are curtains and, beyond them, the soft glow of a bathroom light left on. It makes the upstairs windows look even lonelier, curtainless and completely dark.

  I let myself in through the back fence, the door the trash men use to empty the Dumpsters. This was the way I used to get in any time I forgot my key, which was once or twice a week. From the fire escape, I climb to the top floor and slide open the window with the broken lock. Without any groceries on the counter or dirty dishes in the sink, the kitchen doesn’t feel as familiar as I thought it would. I cross to the light switch, bare feet on ice-cold linoleum. The light switch doesn’t work, of course—nobody’s been paying any of the bills; nobody lives in this apartment—and fear creeps into my belly at being alone in the dark. My footfalls echo until it sounds like I’m not the only one walking.

  The place is filthy like we left it. Boot prints track up the kitchen floor, and the sink is stained from dirty dishes and rust-colored water. I try the faucets, but they won’t turn on, of course. There isn’t any water, just like there isn’t any light. I do the best I can with what I have, which is half a roll of paper towels from under the sink and my own spit. I scrub the sink, scrape at the dried boot prints until some of the marks lift away. I use the bottom of my shirt to wipe the windows, but they stay grimy and I can’t see much on the other side.

  • • •

  When it starts to get light out, I stop cleaning and head back to Phyllis’s. Although I haven’t slept, I feel like somebody waking up after a nap they didn’t mean to take. I try to hurry, but people in cars still stare at a jogging girl in her pajamas with no coat on. Two different times, someone stops to help. When they pull over, I walk faster. Then a police car pulls over. I stop. My heart hits the back of my rib cage faster and faster.

  Phyllis is trying to hide tears when I get out of the police car. I’m washed in guilt. She runs to me, reaches out like she’s going to hug me or slap me—I can’t tell which, because her hands are shaking. Either way, she stops short. She keeps shoving bits of gray hair behind her ears. I think she’s gotten grayer in the two months we’ve known each other. She thanks the officer, who speaks quietly with her. She hurries me inside, where there is oatmeal and blankets.

  • • •

  “Phyllis?”

  “Hmm?” She’s cleaning the kitchen again, washing out oatmeal bowls while I soak my feet in a hot pan of water. The water’s murky and gray from all the filth I picked up along the road, but my feet feel thawed.

  “Can I stay home today?” It feels like weeks have passed since Thursday, but somehow it’s only Friday. The clock on the oven, right again now that it’s spring, says I’m going to be late for the bus if I don’t leave soon.

  Phyllis pulls a spoon from the drainer and holds it up to the light, then runs it under water again. It isn’t until she’s rubbing it dry with a dish towel that she answers, “I wish you would.”

  • • •

  The snow comes back at dusk. The flakes are small and beady against the heavy, wet gray of the sky. I sit in bed and think about how I didn’t visit the GUI-tar today. It seems far away, like my life before Michael died.

  Phyllis sits on the edge of my bed, picking at one corner of the blanket.

  “Sasha, tell me what you need,” she says. “Tell me what on this earth’ll keep you from running off like this.” Her voice is not her usual Sasha voice. It’s the kind of voice people use to plead with traffic to move out of their way, or to plead with God to make somebody stay. It’s the kind of voice people use when they’re not really talking to the person right in front of them.

  I don’t know what I need. I need time to slow down. I need to escape Caboose, or I need to stop feeling like I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t. I stay quiet, playing with the bits of yarn sticking up out of the center of each quilt square. We play with opposite ends of our blanket, me and Phyllis. I can hear the wind playing with the loose shingles on Hubert’s roof. A siren starts up somewhere out in the town.

  Phyllis blows out a breath. I think about how I’m not hers and about how everybody has to have a giving-up point. I can’t look at her anymore, at the eyes I’ve made sad and the hands I’ve made shake. Guilt and dread make me weak, and I sink down under the covers, rolling away from her. I tug up the quilt. It smells like laundry detergent. I feel it slip from her grasp when I pull.

  “Wake me,” she says, and now he
r voice is closer to the one I’m used to hearing. “Before you go running off again, just . . . just wake me. Then if you still have to run, I’ll run with you.” She rests the back of her warm hand against my cheek for a long moment, but she doesn’t kiss me good night.

  9

  For two days, I’m too sick to realize I’m sick. I try to lie perfectly still, and I wonder why the room is spinning. Sometimes Phyllis is there with oatmeal or soup or tea I can’t drink. Sometimes I’m alone in the room and I keep thinking I’m seeing things move in the dark corners.

  By the time I wake on Monday, there’s news I don’t want to hear coming in from the mines, so I’m sick in another way. I stay under the covers.

  The blankets and sheets don’t smell like laundry detergent anymore. They smell like sweat and sickness and me. On Wednesday, the first of May, I feel well enough to escape them. I make my shaky way out to the porch. The world looks wet, like it’s been raining, but it’s much warmer than it was when I was last out. Weak evening sun turns the porch boards orange, even though I know they’re chipped-paint gray.

  I’m not expecting to see Hubert. He should be in for supper about now. But his screen door creaks open almost as soon as I sit down.

  He doesn’t look like himself in his suit. His hair is slicked back with visible comb streaks, and he keeps tugging at his necktie. Although his outfit matches the ones the news anchors have been wearing on TV, Hubert doesn’t in any way look like those men. He looks uncomfortable and sweaty.

  “Hi,” I call, raising a hand.

  He raises one back. “Feeling better, little lady?”

  I smile a little. Ben used to call me that, too. “Yep.” I study him. He looks so different today. Behind him, Shirley comes out of the house in a black dress. She’s got Marla in her arms, and Sara toddles beside them. Both little girls are in dark dresses, Sara’s green and Marla’s blue. Marla is fussing and bending over her mother’s arm. She wants down to play. But Shirley must know as well as I do that if she puts Marla down, the baby will go immediately to the muddiest place she can find and the dress will be ruined.