Martha Calhoun

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Martha Calhoun Page 21

by Richard Babcock


  “Snakes. A whole nest of them,” Bunny called out, slamming the door behind her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mrs. Vernon’s vegetable garden is a long, rectangular patch of uneven greens planted in the backyard, out of the shade of the oak. On Wednesday morning, at her suggestion, I put on an old T-shirt and jeans and went to the garden to weed. She said I was worrying too much, that I should keep busy to get my mind off my problems. For a while, I plucked diligently at the unwanted, leathery sprouts that circled and closed in on the vegetables. The garden was small enough that I got the idea you could make it completely weed-free—a perfectly controlled piece of land. That image of pure, black, cleared soil, the very neatness of it, kept me occupied. Kneeling in the dirt, I moved forward inch by inch. Every few feet, I’d turn up a shard of glass or a bent nail, or an ancient, rusted bottle cap. On soft nights, looking out Sissy’s window, I’d seen the glint of moonlight off the junk in the garden, bits of glass and metal that had worked their way to the surface after a hard rain. The whole world is built on an old trash heap, I thought. You can’t keep the stuff down.

  My hand turned a gaudy green from the plant juice. Soon my back started to ache, and my thighs got sore. I had to stand up every few minutes to stretch my muscles. I’m so tall that I don’t bend easily, and working close to the ground is terribly awkward for me. The more I worked, the clumsier I felt. Stretching once, I saw Dwayne standing on the sidewalk by the house, holding his bicycle and watching me. I ached too much to wave. The unweeded row seemed to go on forever. Mrs. Vernon worked on her garden every day of the summer, and still the weeds were unstoppable. It’s amazing, really, all the weeds and junk in the world. It’s a wonder anyone gets anything worthwhile done.

  I’d been at it for about an hour, when Mrs. Vernon came out the back door. “Someone sent you a letter,” she called out, waving an envelope. “The mailman just brought it.”

  The soiled and crinkled envelope looked as if it had spent time in someone’s pocket. I recognized the handwriting immediately—stiff, blocky printing that broke occasionally into script. Tom had never had the patience to write properly. He talked that way, too—in bursts of words that sometimes came out so fast you didn’t have any idea what he was saying.

  “Who do you suppose it’s from?” asked Mrs. Vernon, pushing the envelope toward me. The return address was only a long number and the name of a town, Sherwood. Everyone in Illinois, even Mrs. Vernon, knows what’s in that town. It’s as if the place has no other purpose, as if no ordinary person would possibly live there. I snatched the letter and took it over to a shady spot at the side of the house, sitting down with my back to the wall. I ripped open the envelope with my finger. The letter was written with a soft pencil on grayish paper that was thin and pulpy.

  Dear Weakheart,

  I heard the news! Some guy got here from Edmonton Monday morning (a car thief!!!) and he knew all about it. Now everyone wants to meet you! I guess us Calhouns are all college material after all. From what I hear, Horner will probably give you a full scholarship. You’ll learn a lot of important stuff. Like I’m learning how to paint numbers on lisence plates and fold socks into pairs (you have to be able to count to two to do that). Plus, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people, like Doug Thacker, who shot his gym teacher in the leg with a BB gun. I asked him why and he said because he was aiming at his ---- and missed! Well, that’s about all I had to say. I just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. How’s Bunny? Sorry this writing is so hard to read, but they won’t let us have any sharp pencils so we won’t stab each other.

  As Always,

  Tom

  P.S. If you take my advise, you’ll run away. You can’t imagine how bad it is here. I know I’m going to die before I ever get home again.

  I read the letter over twice quickly, then a third time more slowly. When I looked up, Mrs. Vernon was settled in on a folding chair near the back door, pealing and coring apples for a pie. She was pretending to be occupied by the work, but every now and then her head tilted, and her gaze sneaked over toward me. When I saw that, I wanted to do everything in my power to hurt her. So I folded the letter into a tight wad, and when I was certain she was watching, I reached down the front of my T-shirt and stuffed the wad into my bra.

  I went back to the garden and took my place between a second planting of carrots and a row of young beans. The beans were sending out tendrils that curled along a suspended line of string. To try to get comfortable, I stretched my legs down the narrow path between the rows and rested on my side. My jeans were getting filthy.

  I tried to imagine Tom, scrunched up at some worn and dirty reform-school desk, composing a letter to me. We’d been great friends once, when we were very little. Bunny’s got snapshots from those days, grainy photographs in which I’m either looking up adoringly at him or clinging to the tail of his shirt. In a couple of the pictures, Tom and I are hunkered down, squatting on our haunches the way Indians do, inspecting something small on the ground. Sitting that way seems impossible now, it seems to defy balance. The memory of doing it has disappeared, just like the memory of when Tom and I were close. Once he got into school, he spent most of his time with his own friends—when he wasn’t in the principal’s office, answering for some sort of mischief. He was always up to something. On a dare, he ate a crayon. He dropped his arithmetic book down a storm sewer. He slipped out of class and hid all afternoon in the boiler room and only emerged to show off a mouse he’d caught with his baseball glove. The school was always calling Bunny, and it was probably during that time that I started to think of Bunny and me as somehow separate in the family from Tom. “What are we going to do with your brother?” Bunny would ask. And though she loves Tom very much, there was a way in which she almost seemed to enjoy the situation—the two of us plotting a way to save him.

  He grew angry with Bunny as he got older. He sulked around the house, hardly talking to either of us. He was defiant of all authority, but his problem with Bunny was something different, because she was never strict. She tried to talk to him and take an interest in his friends, even though some of them were dreadful boys, the worst Katydid has to offer. When he got in trouble, she would run down to the police station to try to work things out. After a while, I thought she was too forgiving. She certainly loved him hard. But Tom held a grudge against her anyway, almost as if he blamed her for all the rules and restrictions that other people were placing on him. It was a terrible thing when they sent him away, but Bunny’s house was much calmer after he left.

  A sharp corner of Tom’s wadded-up letter pushed painfully into my left breast. My heart was pounding hard, and with each beat the paper stabbed. I didn’t try to move it, though. Something about the pain was almost comforting.

  What would happen to me at a place like Sherwood? How would I ever get by? We’d always heard stories—they’d beat you with straps, lock you in closets. You’d have to go weeks without talking to anybody. Vicious kids from the city were there with razor blades hidden in their shoes. You never knew how true the stories were. Even the thought of the Home terrified me. Once, Mrs. Rothermel, my fourth-grade teacher, found two runaways from the Home hiding in her barn. They told her they couldn’t stand it there anymore, but all the same she turned them over to the police. It had pained her, she said, but what else could she do? Everyone in class was left wondering what had happened to those kids.

  Tom had never said much about Sherwood before, at least not that Bunny had ever told me. She used to go down to visit once a week. I went with her a few times, though she never wanted me to come; she thought the place was too gruesome for me. The visiting room was a big, airless space with cinder-block walls and little tables and chairs, like a kindergarten. Guards were wandering all around, staring at the families as if to ask, Well, how’d you go wrong? How’d you let that boy turn out that bad? Most of the time when I was there, Tom just slouched in his chair and made jokes across the room with some of the other boys. Bunny used to brin
g him books, and he’d always refuse to keep them. Once, though, he kept a book on Eskimos. Something about it interested him.

  He never said anything about dying there, but he wouldn’t say it now if it weren’t true, I thought. He’s a kidder, but not about something like that. And if he can’t take it, what about me? I’m not tough the way he is. I shrivel up when someone yells at me. I get depressed if I can’t talk to Bunny. I know I have my limits, so I’ve always tried to avoid situations that could get me in trouble. There was just that one, stupid, stupid time. It’s almost crazy, I thought. I’m usually so careful, so much more careful than other people. And then there comes a single moment when I’m not thinking about what will happen or whether what I’m doing is bad, and I get caught. It’s unfair, it’s so unfair it’s even meaner than that—it’s something off the scale of fairness, as if the whole situation had been designed to break me down.

  The screen door on the back of the house slammed suddenly and snapped me back to attention. Mrs. Vernon had gone inside. I looked down at the section of garden that I’d been weeding, and it was all black. The earth was cleaned out. I’d pulled up everything, even the baby carrots. They were now lying in the weed pile, the carrot parts looking like tiny, helpless teeth among the leafy weeds. For several minutes, I tried to stuff the carrots back in the ground, but it was no use. The green stalks were already turning limp.

  Back in the house, I telephoned Bunny, but there was no answer at her house or at Eddie Boggs’s place. At the country club, Mr. Higgins said he hadn’t seen her yet. I waited a few minutes, standing in the hall and staring at the phone. I had to do something. Finally, I called Simon Beach, the lawyer. It took several rings for his secretary to answer.

  “Is Mr. Beach there?” I asked.

  “Who is this?” She sounded suspicious. I remembered the smile that had made me uncomfortable.

  “This is Martha Calhoun.”

  “Martha? Is that Bunny’s daughter?”

  “Yes. Can I speak to him?”

  “Well, what on earth for?” Her voice had a laugh in it.

  “About my case.”

  “Your case?” More of that hateful laugh. “Oh, your case. Is that why you and your mother were here the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Beach isn’t in today. He’s down in southern Illinois on another matter, and he won’t be back in the office until next week.”

  I couldn’t say anything. After a few seconds, the secretary asked, “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “I’ve got a trial on Friday. He’s supposed to defend me.”

  “Friday? Oh, I’m sure not. Mr. Beach never misses a court date. I keep his calendar, and there’s nothing coming up on Friday.”

  “He promised Bunny he’d do it.”

  “Are you sure? He never mentioned anything to me.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What was the name of the case? Do you remember?”

  “It was about me.”

  “Well, what kind of a case was it? Were you hurt in an accident?”

  “It was juvenile delinquency.”

  “Ohhhh.” She waited a moment. “Well, Mr. Beach never handles juvenile cases. At least, he’s never handled one since I’ve been here.” Another pause. “Well, let me look in the files. I always make up his files, but maybe this once he did it himself. You’re Martha Calhoun, right? C-A-L-H-O-U-N?” She spelled it out.

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on a second, and I’ll look.”

  She was gone three or four minutes. After a minute or so, I realized I was holding the phone so hard against my ear that it was hurting me. I loosened up, and the receiver turned incredibly heavy, as if it were made of iron. Mrs. Vernon, who’d been upstairs, wandered down and looked puzzled to find me on the phone.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  I shook my head and turned to the wall. When the secretary came back at last, she opened with a sigh. “Well, I don’t find it. I looked over the active and inactive files, and I went through the papers on his desk, and there’s nothing there. I’m afraid there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. Why don’t you check with your mother again?”

  “I don’t need to check with my mother. He promised.”

  “He may call in later today. He’s on the road, but he may call in, and, if he does, I’ll give him your message. Why don’t you leave your number?”

  I gave her Bunny’s number, the Vernons’ number, and the number out at the country club. She read them back to me.

  “Okay, got it,” she said. “I’ll give him your message. Good luck with your case. But you don’t really need a lawyer in juvenile court anyway, do you?”

  I put the receiver back gently and wandered down the hall. After a few steps, I stopped by a plant stand, a tall, spindly table made of wood. The hall didn’t get much direct light, so Mrs. Vernon had set out a thin vase filled with pussy willow twigs. For no reason, I pinched one of the soft buds, and it broke into furry tufts, which clung to my fingers.

  What a fool I’ve been, I told myself. I’ve been wrong from the start, wrong forever. No one can help me, not even Bunny. Nobody cares. Oh, maybe Bunny does, but she’s got too many other problems. Everybody’s got other problems. I’m all alone in this. Why didn’t I see that before? What a fool.

  I felt a charge of energy. Realizing how things really were gave me a new sense of power. It seemed for a moment that I could change myself right then, forever, just because I wanted to. No one’s going to solve my problems but me, I told myself. Everything’s up to me.

  I turned and marched back to the phone. Fumbling clumsily with the directory, I found the number of the police station and gave it to the operator. When Mrs. Donaldson picked up, I asked to speak to Sergeant Tony. He came on the line and didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. “Come on down, and let’s talk,” he said.

  Mrs. Vernon offered to drive me, but I told her I’d rather walk. “Why don’t you take Sissy’s bike?” she suggested. She led me through the kitchen into the garage. Garden tools and fishing gear hung from the walls, and dark spots of grease patterned the cement floor. In a corner, she pulled away a large sheet of canvas, unveiling Sissy’s lavender three-speed, still glistening with oil. “Walter looks after it every month,” said Mrs. Vernon. “Don’t know why, really, since no one ever rides it. You can imagine how a father gets about these things, though.” She frowned suddenly. “I hope he’s been checking the brakes, too.”

  “I’m sure they’re okay.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”

  “This’ll be fine.”

  She opened the garage door, flooding the room with midmorning sunlight. The seat was a little low—Sissy was much shorter than I am—but I didn’t bother to adjust it. I just wanted to get there, to make something happen at last. Dwayne was still lurking outside. He jumped on his bike and pedaled after me, but his rickety, wide-wheeled one-speed couldn’t stay with Sissy’s smooth and almost unused machine. Besides, I had energy now, I had power. I knew what I wanted to do.

  I sped past the humming KTD. An old, green station wagon filled with Mexicans passed me going the other way, and someone yelled something. I pedaled harder. The streets were almost deserted. The air sat in hot, puffy clouds between the trees, and the leaves hung listlessly. During the spring, if there had been storms in the area, this kind of stillness might be taken for tornado weather. At times like that, the air turns a kind of yellow, and everything that can move stops, as if the coming storm had sucked up all the wind to save for itself. But summer heat is different. There’s no sense that something’s coming and eventually will pass. It’s just timeless, it’s dead weather.

  At the police station, I parked Sissy’s bike in the rack in front. Mrs. Donaldson was sitting behind the screened-in counter. “Yes,” she said without looking up. Then she did look up. “What do you want?” she demanded. I told her I was there to see
Sergeant Tony. The bicycle trip had hardly winded me, and I bounced softly from one foot to the other. Mrs. Donaldson grunted and spoke into a microphone. “Tony, you got a visitor.” Her words boomed out of loudspeakers around the lobby and down the hall in back.

  “You can wait over there,” she said, nodding toward the bench.

  In a minute, Sergeant Tony came out from in back. He was wearing bermuda shorts again and whistling a tune I didn’t recognize. “Hey! Martha!” he called out cheerfully. “Come on in.” He unlocked the gate in the screen and held it open. To Mrs. Donaldson he said, “Hey, I seen your boy got a hit last night in Little League. He’s gonna be a real slugger.” Mrs. Donaldson looked at him grumpily and turned back to her desk. “Let’s go, beautiful,” he said to me, and he led the way down the hall to his office.

  Inside, he held a chair for me and then sat down behind the desk, but a second later, he bounced back up. “Let’s have some privacy,” he said, walking over and flipping a lock on the door. “Just you and me, okay? Nothin’ goes out of this room. Just you and me, okay, beautiful?” He sat down again. “Okay, beautiful, let’s have it. What’s on your mind?”

  His energy was deflating me, stealing from mine. How could I keep up with him? I took a breath. “I came to talk about what happened,” I said. “I mean, with Butcher.” It hurt even to say his name out loud.

  Sergeant Tony leaned back. “I’m here to help,” he said.

  I cleared my throat. This was harder than I’d expected. Talking about it made it real in a way I’d never allowed before. “What I want to say is that I know I did a stupid, stupid thing. Something that’s totally unlike me—I’m not like that at all.” His unflickering eyes were trained on me. His face gave away nothing. “And if there’s any way we could get past this—you know, I mean, let it be forgotten—I’d never be in here again, I promise that. Never. Why, we’d move away if you wanted.”

  “Move away?”

  “Yes.”

  “From Katydid?”

 

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