Free Verse

by Sarah Dooley

  “No . . . ,” Mikey says. “You didn’t tell me that one. But that would have been good to know before I walked off into the woods with you. Might have give me some clue we were going to walk forever.”

  “Just to see if we could,” I repeated. It’s only partway true. Me and Michael walked just to see if we could, but we also walked to see if things felt different when we got back. It was only a week after Ben died, and when we got back, Michael got practical. He started working at the grocery store and quizzing me on spelling words. He started making plans for us to leave.

  The street vendors won’t open their stands until it gets all the way dark. Our stomachs growl at sights and smells. We sit on the curb. Mikey stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back on his elbows. For a moment I’m struck by how much like my brother he looks, all casual.

  “Well?” he asks. “Could you?”

  “Huh?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Walk for twenty-four hours.”

  “Give or take.” We were gone a day and part of a night. I don’t fill him in on the hours spent sitting with our backs against trees while one or the other of us cried.

  “Opening-night special,” a man in a hat calls into the growing crowd. “Two footlongs, two dollars! Opening-night special, people! Get your footlongs!”

  My hand uncurls from the suitcase. My fingers are cold from being wet. I scratch and scramble at the clasps until the case comes open. I snatch out two dollars, a third for tax, in case they charge it. I slam the case shut before anyone can see I’m carrying money. My brother taught me to always keep it hidden.

  I catch up to the hot dog man and shove two dollars into his hand. “One with everything”—I don’t know what everything is, but the more food, the better, I figure—“and one with ketchup.” Because I know Mikey won’t eat whatever everything is.

  The man’s gaze slides from the dollars to my filthy hand. To my filthy face. To my filthy cousin.

  “Y’all been enjoying the festivities already,” he comments. He takes the dollars, no tax, and serves up the hot dogs. He keeps looking. I take Mikey by the elbow and thread us back into the crowd.

  Everything turns out to include at least two things I don’t recognize. Still, food is food, and I don’t much care what it tastes like. We eat while we watch the narrow streets of Alley Rush fill up with people. Some of the people are dressed the way they would have been at the very first Alley Rush festival, in gingham and in overalls, as if they’ve come in from the farm. I know they’re dressed this way only for today, because their clothes are clean, and because this isn’t how farmers dress anymore. I see real farmers in town sometimes. They wear tan work boots and T-shirts with rectangles worn in the pockets from their cigarette packs.

  Every power pole in Alley Rush has got a yellow ribbon tied around it. At first I wonder why, and then I feel stupid for wondering why. Just because I haven’t been watching the news doesn’t mean every other person in the region hasn’t. The fact that the signs and ribbons are up tells me everything I need to know: the accident at the mine was bad. The ringing phone Phyllis went to answer would have brought us terrible news.

  All the church signs have had the letters rearranged till they say something about the miners from down our way: GOD BLESS OUR MINERS and WE LOVE OUR MINERS and PRAYERS WITH THE FAMILYS, which is spelled wrong, which makes me feel like crying. I know there isn’t a city in the region that doesn’t have the fate of the Dogwood miners in mind. It doesn’t matter whether the town’s got mines of its own. We all feel it when something bad like this happens.

  There are booths all up and down the street. Nearly every one has a sign announcing it sells something carved out of certified Alley Rush hardwood. There are game booths for knocking over bowling pins carved out of hardwood. There are antique booths stocked with old figurines carved out of hardwood. I look around. Alley Rush was carved out of hardwood. The only trees still growing in city limits are saplings, young and skinny like Mikey.

  There’s a live band, too. They’re not very good, but no one seems to care. People are dancing in the street. The later it gets, the more people dance, and the fewer of them are kids. If this were a movie town, there would be a clock in the square. I duck to look at a man’s watch as he reaches for a footlong. It’s nearly midnight.

  It feels so good to be full. It feels so good not to be walking. I feel so good, I sweep Mikey into the street. We spin. We dance. It feels good to dance. Lights spin around us. We spin around each other. Our feet get faster the more tired we get. We sing songs we don’t know the words to. We hold on to each other’s hands so tight we might never be able to let go. We laugh like happy people. We breathe air that’s getting colder.

  • • •

  Later, we stop dancing, but the world does not stop spinning. We lie down on the grass of someone’s lawn. The world still does not stop spinning.

  19

  A voice comes out of the dark.

  “Why we doing this, Sasha?”

  There is faraway laughter and the shouts of drunk people as the town slowly comes down from its Hardwood Festival high. The grass under my head is dry. No dew means it’s going to rain soon. I hope not tonight. A better guardian would find shelter for Mikey, but I can’t get up off this grass. I can hear dogs barking and, in the distance, the Jake brakes of some truck heading away down Route 10. Those sounds are familiar, but there are fewer birds and bugs singing here in the darkness than there are back home. I guess that makes sense, if there are fewer trees.

  It’s hard to find the right words in the right order, but I can hear from Mikey’s breathing that he’s still awake and waiting. Somewhere in me, the poetry flickers to life again and gets my words unstuck.

  I say:

  “Outside of Caboose,

  people laugh more than they cry,

  and we deserve that.”

  There’s a long quiet, so long I think Mikey’s gone to sleep there in the dark beside me. But then the tired little voice finds me again. “That’s bull,” he says. “I laugh plenty back home.”

  “Whenever we laugh

  back home, we know there’s a chance

  bad news is coming.”

  It doesn’t sound like a poem, but I like picturing the line breaks in my head.

  “Sasha?” The pause is longer this time, and his voice is smaller. I abandon the poetry now that it’s gotten me started.

  “Yeah, Mikey?”

  “Is my dad dead?”

  I’m glad it’s dark so my cousin can’t see the tears that start to roll out of the corners of my eyes, down the sides of my head, and into my hair. I wipe my nose on my sleeve instead of sniffling out loud. I don’t want Mikey to hear me.

  “Is he?” Mikey asks again.

  “The longer we’re gone,” I say, “the longer we don’t have to know. And the longer it’ll be before anybody else goes away.”

  There’s quiet while he mulls. I know he’s mulling and not sleeping because he makes little thoughtful noises and hauls in shaky little breaths.

  “Okay,” he says finally. Lying wide-awake in the grass in a strange town, watching black clouds turn silver in front of the moon, he agrees to my plan. “Okay. We can run away.”

  “I’m glad you think so, since we already did.”

  20

  I wake already knowing things have changed.

  Mikey is tugging on me. Pulling on my sleeves. His voice slides in from somewhere else. I think I might be underwater.

  “Wake up, Sasha! C’mon, wake up!”

  I do, at last. I sit, and the world is still spinning. It’s full, bright daylight, and Mikey and I are no longer alone.

  “Young lady,” says the police officer in his uniform, which, up close, is not as crisp as I would have thought a policeman’s uniform would be. His face is marked with stubble, as though policing the festival has wo
rn him out. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh.” I get to my feet, but it takes me a minute to remember we’re in Alley Rush. The festival is getting under way again. The sidewalks are full of clumps of kids walking together, teenagers in school shirts, laughing.

  “Young lady?”

  “Oh.” I focus on the officer. “Oh. I’m fine. Yes, sir, thank you. I’m fine.”

  But he’s not satisfied. He waits.

  “We stayed out late last night at the festival. I guess I fell asleep.” I sound more normal than normal. I sound more normal than Lisa.

  He keeps looking. I start to hustle Mikey away. The officer puts out a hand to stop us.

  “Young lady, I need you to stay with me for a moment.” He’s reaching for something. A gun, maybe. Worse. A radio.

  The radio makes something inside me shake. As it crackles, I remember the final call for Michael at his funeral. I remember how the air went quiet when he didn’t answer. He’s buried now in Caboose, and he’ll be there forever; he’ll never get out.

  If this police officer takes me and Mikey back, we might never get out, either. This is it—our now or never.

  I tug on Mikey and he follows me, too slowly. I shove him ahead of me, hard. This Michael Harless will get away. I’ll make sure of it.

  We make it three steps before a hand closes on my shoulder. “Young lady!” Then, worse, “Sasha Harless!”

  Panic bangs into my chest. I twist free of the officer’s grip. I keep pushing on Mikey. “Go! I’ll catch up!”

  Mikey turns to look at me. His eyes are wide and almost all pupil. I think for a second it’s fear, but then he grins—this quick, wild grin that I’ve never seen on him before—and starts to run again. Now that he’s running on his own, I’m having trouble keeping up. Mikey is tiny and built out of muscle, and he’s quick as a hummingbird.

  I grasp a handful of my cousin’s filthy T-shirt, uncertainty wedging itself into my heart. He’s going too fast, getting too far ahead of me. I want him to escape, but not alone. I think of Shirley, weeks ago, asking if I could handle him, and I struggle to hold on, but I can’t get a good grip. I feel the warmth of his skin through the thin cloth, the sharp jut of his shoulder blade, before my fingertips lose contact.

  Mikey does not turn around as he disappears into the woods. One minute, he’s in sight, and the next, he isn’t anymore. Like everyone else I’ve ever loved.

  21

  I’ve never been in a police station before. I expected ringing phones and jangling jail keys and officers coming in with criminals. Instead it’s just me and the officer who caught me. We’re sitting on opposite ends of a bench. He has a black eye and a sprained pinkie. He has scratches the shape of my fingernails up and down his arms. He looks heavenward, and then at the clock, and then at me.

  “Young lady,” he says, then seems to remember that he knows my name. “Miss Harless.”

  “Where’s my cousin?” I ask.

  “Well now, Sasha, you’re the one that told him to run. So you know as much as I do about where he’s gone.”

  I feel sick. I may have done the wrong thing.

  “I didn’t want him to be by himself, but . . .”

  He picks his teeth. “Well, Sasha, nobody wants anything but the best for William.” He says best slower than the rest of the sentence. He pinches the bridge of his nose, winces. He forgot his black eye. I forget, too, but I know I must have done it. “William’s a young boy. He has problems. We all understand that. We just want to find him so we can take care of him.”

  “His name’s Mikey, and he doesn’t have any problems. He didn’t mean anything bad. Running away was my idea,” I say.

  Officer Cruise shifts his weight and the bench creaks. His brass nametag catches the light. “Sasha,” he says. “How ’bout you help us find the boy.”

  I shift lower in my seat. The wooden bench is warm. I wonder if it is certified Alley Rush hardwood like they were selling at the festival. “I don’t know how to find Mikey. He’s all alone. He’s not very good at running away. I don’t know where he is.” The truth of it sinks into my stomach. “I don’t know where he is.”

  Grace comes, and looks me up and down to make certain I’m in one piece.

  “You do know how to give a body a heart attack,” she says. Then she turns to Officer Cruise, and they talk to each other like I’m not here. Once in a while, one of them says something to me in the sort of voice you’d use to get close to a stray cat. I don’t hear their words.

  I ask for the bathroom. But there aren’t any windows. I’m stuck. I sit in the corner of the bathroom. I rock. I worry about Mikey. I think I might be crying.

  • • •

  I ask about Phyllis. Grace says no. She says someone else has agreed to take me.

  “Your cousin’s on the way,” she says.

  “Mikey?”

  “Not that cousin.” Her voice is kind, but I tune her out. I stand and pace.

  “Sasha?”

  In the doorway is Hubert Harless. I think for a minute I’m seeing a ghost. But Hubert is wearing his blue flannel shirt and threadbare jeans. If he had died in the mines, his ghost would be stuck forever in his mining uniform. I figure that means he’s alive, which is so earthshaking that I need to sit down, except Hubert has crossed the room to me in two steps and put his arms around me. I don’t know if he’s touching me in anger or relief until he kisses the top of my head.

  “Sasha,” he says. “God Almighty.”

  “You’re—” I can’t say alive. I’m afraid he might contradict me.

  “You scared me, little lady,” he says. I can’t bear the kindness in his voice. He has to know.

  “I lost Mikey,” I rush to confess.

  He shushes me. He smells like coal. His hands are so gentle for a man his size.

  “Hubert, I lost Mikey.”

  “We both did, honey,” he says.

  22

  Night comes. Not the good kind. The kind that might not ever get light again. My gaze flies back and forth. First, I look at Hubert, alive. Stuck underground till late in the evening the day of the accident, but alive. Not even hurt. And then I turn my gaze to the window, in case Mikey is out there. Hubert drives past the festival sign. The vendors have stopped selling. Nobody is dancing in the street. Outside of town, along the edges of the woods, you can see the people searching. You can see the deputy badges and the bobbing flashlights. It looks like a miniature hardwood festival, there among the trees.

  Hubert says he’s taking me home. I throw open the truck door. The ground slices past.

  Hubert swerves onto the shoulder of the road. He swears at me. He leans across me to slam the truck door. He says these damn kids will be the death of him yet.

  “You’re worried about Mikey,” I say.

  His voice is still shaking. “You’re damn right I am.”

  “It’s my fault he’s lost.” I feel the truth of this to my bones.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Sasha, that’s no reason to jump out of the doggone truck.”

  “I’m not leaving Alley Rush until I find him.” Till I make up for this stupid thing I’ve done, dragging Mikey away from Caboose before we knew Hubert was all right.

  Hubert swears and swears. When he stops talking, he keeps breathing hard. He hunches over the wheel. This is the closest to crying I’ve ever seen a coal miner. I tilt my head and study him, but he never looks back at me.

  We sit by the road for a full five minutes. Then Hubert turns the truck around.

  • • •

  We watch motel cable. First is a lawyer show and then a teacher show and then a game show. Then Mikey is on a few channels.

  Hubert presses “mute” and dials the phone. He swears, clangs the receiver back onto the base. Picks up the phone again and remembers to dial 9 first. He waits a minute. Then he hands the ph
one to me.

  “Hello?” comes a familiar voice. Emotion clogs my throat. There are so many things I have to tell her: I’ve lost Mikey and I don’t get to come home to her and I spent her guitar money. I swallow a couple of times before I speak.

  “Oh. Hey, Phyllis, it’s me.” My words come out normal, but her response isn’t.

  “Good Lord above,” she says, and starts crying.

  I wait till she gets a little quieter, and I tell her, “I lost Mikey.” I think I ought to still be crying, too, but I’ve gone dry.

  “That little boy’s going to turn up,” she says. “I promise you, Sasha.” Phyllis doesn’t seem the type to promise lightly, so this makes me feel a little better.

  I have more bad news, though. I tell her, “They won’t let you have me again. They found out I have a cousin.”

  She laughs. “Honey, that’s a good thing. Hubert’s your family, and I’ve never seen that man so scared as when you and Mikey turned up missing.”

  “But I never bought you a GUI-tar, and now they won’t let you have me again.”

  One breath in and another out. Not so steady now.

  “I was going to buy you a GUI-tar. I was.” In case she doesn’t believe me. “I was saving in my suitcase. I picked out the GUI-tar at the pawnshop. It was the pretty one. Three down on the left.” In case she wants to buy it herself, except I know Mr. Cardman doesn’t pay her that much.

  “The suitcase,” she says. Her voice sounds damp. “Oh, Sasha. I thought you were saving to make your escape.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, because I did make my escape with the money. I don’t say anything at all. I feel like I did something wrong by letting her think that. I want to apologize, but I don’t know how. And then I feel like I did something wrong by saving up for something other than escape. Like if Michael were here, he would disapprove of my priorities. I’ve got so many different kinds of guilt in my heart tonight. I fold up on the motel bed, sitting on my knees with my forehead pressed into the pillows.