by Susan Vaught
“How do you think it’s going?” I ask Dad, keeping my voice as low and calm as Dad did, even though I’d rather advise my father to run like hell.
“I’m starting to win his trust,” Dad murmurs, sticking his hand into the cracked corn and scattering some yellow pieces on the grass at his feet.
The rooster flips his head down and rattles his wings.
Dad spreads a little more corn.
The rooster launches himself straight at Dad’s face.
Dad drops the bucket, catches Clarence in mid-flog, holds on to him for a few seconds, and waits until the rooster stops squawking and struggling. Clarence can’t hurt Dad that much because Clarence doesn’t have any spurs. People who fight roosters usually cut off their real spurs and fasten metal claws on their legs for the fight, so the whole show gets more bloody.
Sick, I know. Clarence has got to be scarred inside and out from all that crap.
“It’s okay,” Dad tells him, scratching underneath the bird’s comb as it makes menacing noises deep in its rooster throat. “We’ll keep at it. We’ll just try again. Sooner or later you’ll figure out that all your wars are over.”
The rooster makes a bunch more noises, and if we had a rooster translating machine handy, I think it would read, Screw off.
Dad named Clarence after an old angel in an old movie, hoping to give the bird the idea that it’s okay to be a cream puff, that he can just take it easy, that he doesn’t have to fight every second of every day.
I don’t think Clarence has seen that movie.
But my father is the patron saint of all lost animal causes. If he can’t get Clarence calmed down enough to go to some farm and do his roosterly duty, Clarence will end up living behind my house in his high-end chicken condo until he dies a natural, quiet, and spoiled death. Not such a bad way to go, really, except I figure he’ll miss some of what it means to be a rooster. That’s sad, but it’s not Clarence’s fault.
Maybe Dad will rescue him some hens soon. That might give Clarence a little motivation to straighten up and strut right.
“Do you ever think you and Mom might be addicted to rescuing animals, Dad?”
“Thought it and acknowledged it.” Dad puts Clarence down, dumps the rest of the scratch, and gets out before Clarence can fire up again. “It’s definitely an addiction.”
Like my music. Only Dad acts like being addicted to animal rescuing is a good thing.
And it is. I guess.
“Are you leaving for work soon?” Dad asks.
“In a few.” I stretch and lean against the wooden railing on the porch, watching Clarence dig into the corn. “We only have two graves to prepare for funerals tomorrow, so we’re in good shape.”
Dad puts his empty bucket next to the fence. “Don’t forget to give your mother a kiss.”
“I never do.”
Especially not since all this crap happened, and the three of us stopped having meals together and hanging out as a group. It’s like my family’s all still together, but sort of going our own separate ways, too. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be when there’s just one kid and that kid’s almost grown, and he doesn’t really have some big shiny set of goals you’re supposed to push him to achieve.
When Dad gets to the porch, he puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me to him, then lets me go and glances back at Clarence. “Sooo, this new girl Livia. You spending some time with her?”
His tone’s light, but the question is completely serious. “She comes by at work, but we still haven’t had—you know. The talk.”
“And you’re sure she’s seventeen.” A statement, not a question, but the worry in his voice makes me sad.
“As sure as I can be without seeing her driver’s license.” When I meet Dad’s eyes, I see the ton of nervousness wanting to explode out of his brain. “Okay, fine, I’ll ask to see her driver’s license.”
Dad doesn’t tell me not to do it. “Bullet and a target,” he says, nodding.
Dad always lets me play my iTunes mixes when we’re driving, and he’s got a big collection of his own. Sometimes, we end up liking the same stuff, and “Bullet and a Target” is the title of a song we both like by Citizen Cope, a singer Dad calls “the best artist nobody knows.”
After he heard it the first time, he thought the same thing I did—that it sounded exactly like what happened to us with Kaison, that we got between a bullet and a target, and there was no way we could get away without getting hit.
But what you’ve done here is put yourself between a bullet and a target …
Now it’s become a code between us that means be careful. Don’t put yourself in a dangerous position, because you know the shooting’s going to start sooner or later.
“I’m staying out of the line of fire,” I tell him.
“I think I’m happy for you, son.” Dad’s not looking at me. He’s staring up toward the blue fall sky. “I hope she keeps coming around once everything’s out in the open. You deserve good things, Del. Do you believe that?”
I focus on the maimed, confused one-eyed rooster pecking at the corn Dad dumped in the chicken lot and I nod, but I’m not sure anybody really deserves anything they get. I don’t think life and the world work like jobs and a paycheck—do your duties, get the money you’ve earned. If it worked that way, then I’d have to figure out what crappy thing I did to earn where I am, and I’ve tried doing that. I really have.
“I guess so.” True enough, but a little lame, and part cop-out.
“Mr. Branson got in touch with us about the hearings again, since they’re just what, four or five months from now.” Dad’s trying to sound offhand, but he’s not doing a very good job. “Your mother and I are discussing giving testimony, but we wanted to run it past you. How do you feel about that?”
How do I feel?
About ripping all this shit open and seeing my face on the news and in newspapers again? About hearing what people will call me, and getting the hate mail? About being terrified that Kaison or Kaison’s ghost or Kaison’s “moral successor” in the DA’s office will find something else to charge me with if I open my mouth?
I feel just great about it, Dad. How do you feel?
“I’ll be okay with whatever,” I say, wondering if I sound like I’m lying, then wondering if I am lying. “You and Mom can do what you want.”
Bullet and a target. Bullet and a target. Bang!
Dad’s not giving up that easily, because he never does, not on anything, even crippled, hateful old roosters who need psychoanalysis not to bite the hand that feeds them—literally. “But what do you want, Del?”
The lump in my throat surprises me, and I find something else to stare at before Dad sees how much I want to cry. I’m way too old to cry now. What good does that do?
After thinking about it and chewing over lots of different words, I tell the truth again, this time not lame or copping out, but 100 percent truth and nothing else. “I don’t want any more bad stuff to happen. That’s really it, Dad. No more bad stuff.”
Dad waits a second or two, then smiles at me. The smile looks sad. “We can’t control everything that happens in life.” His voice sounds quiet, and it gives me the shivers like my brain’s hearing the words as some kind of creepy prophecy. “Sometimes … sometimes the bad stuff just shows up knocking and we have to answer the door.”
Picnic in the graveyard.
This is our second one, so maybe it’s getting to be a theme with Livia and me.
Livia and me.
I think I like that.
Livia and Del.
God help me, I’m going to be Marvin and start etching her name on everything in fat, sparkly hippie letters. Kill me now.
She shows up with warm baked ham sandwiches, potato wedges she cut and fried herself, apple slices, and brownies she made last night. I spread one of Harper’s tarps under a big oak in the rough section of the cemetery, the section with no graves, and cover it with an old quilt. Livia laughs as she pours u
s sparkling water in plastic cups with stems, and we eat shivering in our coats in the cool, bright sunlight, sometimes talking and sometimes just watching the fall day be beautiful and perfect.
My work’s done, Harper’s already sleeping it off in his house, and Livia and I are full and sitting next to each other on the blanket. The sun feels warm on my arms and face. For a second, I think about baseball and softball and the days before everything happened.
What’s weird is, I’m not thinking about Cory, at least not in the way I used to. I cared about her a lot back then, and probably if I knew her today, we’d still be close—but that was a long time ago. It was all a long, long time ago, and Livia is here, and she’s now, and right this second, that’s all that matters to me.
“So this music thing you’ve got,” Livia says, pointing toward the iPod poking out of my jeans pocket. “How long have you been cramming songs onto that thing?”
I think I’m smiling, and I’m pretty sure it’s real and not just a cover for feeling weird and uncomfortable. “I didn’t get into music heavy until I was fourteen, when I got in trouble. When all the bad stuff in my life happened.”
That stuff I’m still not explaining. The smile starts feeling stiff on my lips.
But Livia doesn’t react like I’m thinking she should. She scrolls through my mega-gig iPod menu and says, “You’re kidding. You collected all this stuff in three years?”
“Marvin’s gifted me a lot of songs and my parents give me music credits for my birthday and Christmas. I thought music was fun but no big thing until I really needed it to calm down my thoughts.”
“I wish it would work for me like it does for you,” Livia says. “Sometimes I want to shut everything off, but sometimes I want to let all my feelings out, too, you know? And they just won’t come.”
“I had to go through hundreds of songs before I found the ones that started speaking to me the way I wanted them to. Kinda had to match my mood and stuff.”
She doesn’t look any more hopeful that music might work for her, so I try again. “What’s your strongest feeling right now?”
Livia stares at me with her dark fairy eyes, and her face is so close to mine I think I can feel the heat coming off her skin, and I have to keep saying stuff to myself over and over again, Not now, it’s not right, it’s not fair. When that slips in my head a little, I try, She’s in mourning for her sister. She’s sorting things out. Don’t be a dick and try to kiss her.
Her voice is nothing but a whisper when she says, “Sad.” She blinks. Tears slip down her cheeks, and something burns in my gut when I see them. Her fists clench in her lap, and she starts to shake. “Pissed. God! I can’t tell which one I feel more. Sometimes I think I’m going completely insane.”
Keep hands to yourself. Keep hands to yourself. Keep hands to yourself.
I know I need to do something, offer her some kind of comfort that’s not pervy or bad or wrong, so I cue up one of my shorter mixes:
“I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You”—Alan Parsons Project
“Bird on a Wire”—Leonard Cohen
“Losing Faith”—Audrey Auld
“Ohio”—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
“Broken and Ugly”—Beth Hart
“The Ocean”—The Bravery
“Streets of Philadelphia”—the Bettye LaVette version
“I’ll Follow You into the Dark”—Death Cab for Cutie
Livia takes the iPod from me and looks at the mix. “I’ve never heard of most of these.”
“Old and new—some covers.” I wait for her to put in an earbud and hope the expression on my face is supportive instead of worried that she’ll think the songs are lame.
Livia puts in the second bud, closes her eyes and listens. After a few minutes, she leans into me, and I slip my arm around her and just hold her.
“This is working,” she says after a while. Then, “This is nice.”
How can I argue with that?
I drift away with her, imagining each word in each song. I’m not even paying attention when she turns toward me, but I definitely notice when she kisses me for the first time.
I notice everything from the minty taste on her lips to how soft they are, and the way the music vibrates on her cheeks and mine, even though I can’t totally hear it. She’s breathing and I’m breathing, and it’s so right now, and so real.
Livia.
I touch her hair.
Livia.
Softer than feathers. Softer than air.
I don’t ever want her to stop. I don’t ever want the kiss to stop.
More than anything, I don’t ever want us to stop.
Three Years Ago: Vanishing
The man who drove Marvin and me to the police station was Detective Henning. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just jeans and a white shirt. He looked like he was about as old as my dad, same color hair but less of it, and he probably works out. A lot.
The place where he brought us, it doesn’t look like police stations on television, and I’m in a holding cell, and Mom’s right outside, and I feel like something heavy’s standing on my chest.
One of Marvin’s favorite songs keeps running through my head. “Bank Job” by Barenaked Ladies. It’s about a bunch of guys who try to rob a bank but screw everything up because when they get there, the bank lobby’s all full of nuns, and they can’t make themselves pull guns on nuns.
That would be my luck.
But, I’d never rob a bank even without nuns, or do anything even close to robbing a bank, so why is this happening to me? What did I do?
Mom’s sitting outside the bars in a folding chair one of the detectives found for her. There’s nothing in the cell but a desk and the folding chair—and us.
I don’t like the bars. They look too big. Too thick. Too forever. I’m being stupid, yeah, but I really don’t like the bars, or being inside them. I never thought about how that would feel, because I never planned to be in jail or worried about doing something and going to jail, but here I am, and here are the bars.
The cell smells like piss and bleach and pine cleanser. It’s enough to make my eyes water, but that’s not why my eyes are watering. I’m sitting on the cell’s cot, huddling against the bars, where I can hold Mom’s hand, and the metal feels cold on my face and shoulder.
Every few minutes, Mom checks to see what’s happening.
Stupid, and a big, big baby.
Holding Mom’s hand definitely makes me feel like a dork, but I try to convince myself I’m doing it more for her than for me.
“Marvin didn’t steal any cookies,” I tell her, not sure what else to say, but talking helps me breathe a little better. “And we didn’t try to leave the gym, or get in any fights—nothing. We were just talking.”
Mom squeezes my hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll get it sorted out.”
She sounds confident, but the corners of her eyes are wet like mine, and her jawline looks way tight, like it does when she’s about to ask my father if they can “go somewhere private to discuss this.”
I wish I had Marvin’s iPod. I wish I had an iPod of my own. I could pick out some music and share the earbuds with Mom, and maybe we could both stay calm.
“How’s that parrot?” I ask Mom, still fishing for something to talk about.
Her look of surprise would make a funny poster, but she says, “Lonely, I think. When you’re not there, the bird sort of droops, you know?”
The bars pinch against my skin, and I wonder if the parrot likes the bars on its cage any better.
Probably not.
“When I get home, I’ll try to take it out some.”
Mom blinks at me like she’s not really sure I said that. I could make a few more posters from her face. She doesn’t answer me. Maybe she’s afraid if she says anything, I’ll take back my offer to be nice to the bird.
A little while later, Mom goes out to check on things, then comes back in to tell me, “They’re through with Cory, but she and her parents are waitin
g until after the officers have questioned you.”
She sits down and grabs my hand, and I let her squeeze my fingers, but I really want to scream, Why am I having to sit in a cell? Why is nobody else in a cell? Why did that man in charge of the detectives pick me out?
Mom can’t answer any of those questions. You’d think I’d be able to answer them, that if I’m sitting in a jail cell, I’d have a clue what illegal awful thing I did. Can somebody go to jail and never know why? Is that possible?
I notice my breathing is shallow, so I cough to make myself stop.
“Denise is here for Marvin, but I left your dad out there to keep her calm,” Mom adds.
“That’s good.” Marvin’s mom has a major temper if she thinks somebody’s bothering Marvin. This situation would qualify. Definitely.
A little later, Mom goes out and in again. This time when she sits down, she says, “The officers won’t let us talk about it, but I heard one of the detectives tell a social worker that the coaches called, that it was ‘mandatory reporting.’ Do you know what that means?”
Should I be feeling even more dread now? Mandatory reporting sounds like something nasty and awful. “No. Am I supposed to know?”
Mom shakes her head, runs her hand across her chin, then faces me, talking very, very calmly, like Dad does when he’s trying to calm down an animal. “If an adult thinks a child has been abused or hurt, or is at risk of being abused or hurt, that adult has a legal obligation to call the police or human services—to be sure the child’s protected.”
And all I can think is, What does that have to do with cookies? And, I really should have been nicer to that parrot, because it sucks to be in a cage and not know when you’re getting out.
Mom’s expression turns terrified, but she’s trying to control it. “Del, have you been hurt by anyone?”
“No, ma’am.” I’ll be nicer to the parrot, God, I promise. Please. I didn’t know about the cage thing. I need to stop blinking and half crying, or Mom won’t believe what I’m saying. “Nobody’s done anything to me, I promise. I would have told you.”
Mom relaxes, then gets tense all over again. “Has Cory been hurt? Any of your friends?”