A Vagrant Story

by Paul Croasdell

  Maria sat across from Sierra, sipping her tea as if on a casual outing. Sierra recognised the awkwardness of the silence, but she admired Maria’s ability to remain composed throughout. Sierra on the other hand dashed eyes awkwardly about the room in search of a conversation starter.

  Waiters dashed to and fro rattling pots and plates for customers eagerly awaiting their first meals of the day. Not that there were many customers so early in the morning.

  Maria finished her tea, banging the cup down as to startle Sierra into making eye contact. It worked.

  “You are actually Sierra correct? Tell me I haven’t just brought another homeless person out to eat?”

  Sierra grinned awkwardly. She couldn’t tell if Maria recognised her living situation, or was just cracking a joke. If Sierra remembered the woman correctly, she would likely do both together.

  “Relax, I’m joking. So are you willing to talk to me yet? I haven’t seen you in ten years. The least you could do is say hello. You came all this way with me and now you won’t talk?”

  Sierra sipped tea shyly. Thoughts of diving head first into the scones came abound. Despite her earthly temptations, Sierra piped out some words.

  “I’m sorry, Maria.”

  “We’ll do the easy bits first and leave the hard things for last. Now, what have you been doing this past decade, living the good life I presume?” Maria said, eying Sierra’s shabby clothing. “Is there a girl under all those rags?”

  Sierra grinned hesitantly. “Things have been a bit rough.”

  “I can see that. Aren’t they paying you enough at…”

  “I’m … not working at the moment.”

  “I could have guessed.”

  “I … quit my last job. My boss was an ass.”

  “You developed a tongue too. It’s the first time I’ve heard you swear … to think. I hope you were busy learning something else this whole time. You must be … nearly twenty now. Where did you graduate from?”

  “Graduate?”

  “What college have you applied for? Come on Sierra, do we have to sit here playing question games until I get answers from you?”

  “Maria…”

  “Tell me something about yourself. Where do you live?”

  “I’m … staying with friends. We fight a lot but they’re nice.”

  “I think I know the type. They must keep you supported while you’re out of work.”

  “You could say that. One of them did provide the home I live in.”

  “Provide the home? Then he must be … not an older man surely?”

  “What? No. Yes. No. it’s not like that. I’ve known him quite a while. Actually, I’ve known him since my first night on the … I mean, since the day John … Well, you know what I mean.”

  Sierra whisked up a scone as to restore herself. Nibbling like a titmouse she averted whatever effort Maria made to strengthen eye contact. When it seemed Maria gave up, the woman changed her sights once again on Sierra’s clothing.

  “I regret letting you go that night, Sierra. Just to think if I hadn’t taken my eyes off you that night I could have brought you back inside and talked things out. I looked for you. I know we never really got along, the two of us, but it’s what John would have wanted. And by the time I started looking expectantly around every corner, I realised it’s what I wanted too.”

  “I was a brat.”

  “I was around long enough to watch you grow into that brat. You were our brat, mine and John’s. Even if we did break up, I didn’t think that would ever change. Didn’t you think there was something worth holding onto, between the two of us, I mean?”

  “There wasn’t much in the way of competition. My last foster-mother practically made me eat dirt.”

  “I see.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “All of it? I have read your adoption papers, you know.”

  “Forget it. You were nice. Best mom I ever knew.”

  “Another joke?”

  “No.”

  “I’m quite pleased to hear you say that. Would you believe that’s been something of a weight on me? I often wondered if you’d simply gone away, grown up and forgotten about all of us.”

  “Not even if I tried. When people talk of families, I realise I only ever consider one family as my family. I have one family. I’m happier with that.”

  “John would be happy too. In the end that’s all he wanted from you.”

  “He’ll always be my dad.”

  “That poor fool. He doesn’t know what he missed.” Maria choked on that, pausing to wipe her eye with a tissue. “I hope he can forgive me.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “I loved him so much. At first it was just a fling but he grew on me so quickly. He was such a sweetheart. I never really understood why we started arguing.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I walked out on him. I still loved him but I was the one who walked away, not him. I wanted to make him feel bad but I never expected him to…”

  “He was lonely.”

  “If only I was there for him. I should have stood by him.”

  “You made him happy. I only knew John for three years but being with you was the happiest I’d ever seen him since his wife died. You made him feel happy. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  “If only I’d been patient with him, John would still be here.”

  “It was my fault.”

  A memory passed into Sierra’s mind. As she sat there now staring into Maria’s eyes, she could see the very day those petty arguments stopped and the real feud began. Down to the last detail, she could see the very instant Sierra pushed John down with her own special lies.

  ***

  It was a warm day for winter. John was loading the last of Maria’s belongings from her car into the house. Strictly speaking she’d already been living with them for some time, but this final drop off marked the official beginning of her stay.

  Sierra remembered sitting on the doorstep, watching John scurry back and forth between the house and car. She declined an offer to help Maria move in.

  “Maria owns a lot of stuff,” Sierra said passively to John.

  John took a break to respond. “We are moving her whole house into ours. It took a long time but this is finally the last of it all.”

  “Won’t she need this stuff in her own house?”

  “Not any more, her house is totally empty now. You know what that means?”

  Sierra drew blank.

  “This is it, Sierra,” John continued. “Maria has finally moved in with us for good.”

  “Why does she have to move in with us?”

  “She doesn’t have to do anything. She makes me happy and I make her happy. When two adults make each other happy they move in together.”

  “But … what about Maria’s money problems?”

  “Maria’s money problems?”

  “I heard Maria saying she ran out of money for rent.”

  “Now where did you hear a thing like that?”

  “A while ago, you were out and Maria was minding me. She had her friend in the house, and she told him her landlord was throwing her out. She said she would stay here until she got enough money, and she wouldn’t be able to see her friend again until then.”

  “You heard this, did you? Are you sure?”

  Sierra nodded.

  “This friend of hers, what did he look like?”

  “Can’t remember. Maria has lots of friends over when you’re gone out.”

  “Forget it. This is silly, Sierra. It takes a lot of manpower to move home. They’re probably just workmen. You must have heard them chatting and … misinterpreted.”

  “Why would workmen talk about your writing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes when they’re in the house they talk about your writing. They ask Maria about, ‘John’s latest masterpiece’. After that Maria usually says something funny that makes everyone start laughing.”
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  “Don’t talk like that. You misunderstood. Maria understands how difficult it is to get published these days. She would never do something like that, especially not to me.”

  “What do you mean? Is there something wrong with that?”

  “No. No Sierra, nothing’s wrong.”

  John resumed his work. He moved in and out of the house at a faster rate, carelessly enough to drop a box containing dishes.

  That was the beginning. With one lone seed of doubt to build upon Sierra grew something more ferocious. In time she began planting evidence: a man’s sock or tie under a cushion here and there, prepping bedroom’s to appear hurried out of whenever John retuned home, throwing away John’s own clothes to make it appear Maria gave them to someone else. They were mostly little things, but on the brink of the big lie they each infuriated John’s anxiety, and most of all, his curiosity.

  Sierra knew her scheming to be successful when John began asking Sierra to spy on Maria.

  ***

  Maria placed her mug down.

  “Your fault? What ever are you talking about? It wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of two adults behaving like idiots. We should have talked to one another. I should have talked to him. It was all so confusing. One day we were fine, a nice happy couple. The next he started asking me all these bizarre questions, trying to trap me with word play and always trying to catch me out on something I didn’t understand. Of course I never had much patience. He would become suspicious and I’d just shout my way of the room. I was an idiot. If anything made me look guilty it was my own temper. One sentence. I could have resolved everything in one simple sentence if I wasn’t so damned stubborn.”

  “If it never happened, John would still be here. So simple.”

  “I had to leave him. The silence between us was enough to drive me mad. I wanted him to say something, anything at all just to break that silence.”

  “I would always blame other people for my own problems. It was easier at the time. Now there’s no one left to pin the blame back on me.”

  “You were just a child. You were certainly a handful but to say you had anything to do with what happened to John is … John loved you. I know you were the anchor in this world preventing him from going to the next.”

  “It didn’t hold very long. John knew what I did to him. He must have realised it, that’s why he did what he did. He must have felt so betrayed.”

  “Betrayed? What could you have possibly done to him? You were just a child back then.”

  “I tried to delete his stories from the computer so he’d have nothing left.”

  “I remember that. You couldn’t work the computer so you just banged away at the keypad. You were upset because Jess died. That was your puppy’s name – Jess?”

  Sierra nodded. “She was a golden Labrador. Very sweet dog, though I don’t really remember much about her. She was cute and I played with her, she made me happy – that’s all I remember of her really. Selfish of me, I guess.”

  “That’s all most children would remember – all they should if you ask me.”

  “You make it sound like I was a normal child.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “I went through five foster homes before I was eight years old, you tell me.”

  “Get that out of your head. They were unfit to be parents in the first place.”

  “Apparently I was just a noisy kid most of the time. I wasn’t anything like the angel they were expecting.”

  “Tell me of one good parent who would drop a kid for being too noisy? You’re blaming yourself for things you had no control over, with this and with what happened to John. You were a child then. You had no control over what happened.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Well weren’t you? What could you have done that was so awful?”

  “I told him lies about you. I made it look like you were…”

  “-Having an affair?”

  “You knew what I did?”

  “Of course, John told me.”

  “John knew?”

  “You don’t give the man much credit to think he could be outwitted by a child. John didn’t believe you. In fact after he told me we both thought it was quite cute how jealous you were.”

  “But he … asked me to spy on you.”

  “That’s right. You were his ‘little secret agent.’ That’s what he used to say to you, right? It was the perfect rouse to keep a hyper active child out of the way while we were trying to get my things settled in the house.”

  “A rouse? But then … why did you break up in the end?”

  “I don’t know - adult stuff. We grew apart … John did start drinking more too. A lot of things built up in the end. It just didn’t work out for us.”

  “No.”

  “Sierra?”

  “This isn’t fair. It was my fault!”

  “Never. You just think it was your fault. You’re exaggerating the things you did and trying to take the blame yourself, like any son or daughter would when they lose a parent. What you remember doing might have seemed big to you, but in reality they were nothing but childish games.”

  “But I remember…”

  Maria reached for Sierra’s hand, leaning across the table to whisper. “And I remember Sierra used to be a quiet little girl. She lived in many terrible foster homes, with many terrible people. They were monstrous people.”

  “They weren’t monsters. There was something wrong with me. There had to be something wrong with me. That’s why no one wanted me. I remember always being noisy and getting into trouble all the time.”

  “John told me about the first day he adopted Sierra. She was such a quiet little thing. He said, she looked ready to shriek at a pin drop. She was so quiet it didn’t look like she’d ever spoken in her whole life. You don’t remember being so quiet, do you?”

  “I might have been. My other foster parents would scream at me for being so noisy, or doing bad things. I must have been trying to behave when I moved in with John first. I didn’t want him to yell at me too.”

  “That’s what they told you. Right to this day you still take the blame for it all. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was. You became so used to being blamed you started to accept it as fact. Now you’re afraid to let go of it all.”

  Sierra stifled into choking sadness. Her lips chattered and she lowered her head. She coughed out a whimper, sealing her mouth to hold it all back. She lowered her head to the table as if to hide away. It didn’t matter even if she tried to hide, at least she could hear herself cry for the first time in many years.

  Maria didn’t release her hand the whole time. “John never liked to see people hurt on account of him. Even if they deserved it.”

  “He never did, did he?” Sierra bundled down crying into her own arms. “John.”

  Sierra remembered something else.

  ***

  She remembered bursting the front door of their house open, waving test results in hand. She had hurried home from school quickly to boast over her positive results. It was an event too rare to waste chatting to her friends outside in the dull darkness of a winter mid-day. She’d hurry home and reap the rewards.

  She entered to find that same dull darkness looming over the walls of her house, as though light hadn’t reached here all day. In truth it had been this way since Maria left, but without John waiting to greet her she somehow noticed this depressive atmosphere.

  “John?” Sierra called to an empty hallway and up empty stairs. “I got a C+ on my test.”

  John rarely went out since Maria left. Not that he went out much before then. The thought that John got a sudden urge to go for a walk when Sierra would be due home from school, felt somehow wrong. She would have shrugged it off and proceeded to watch TV, when she realised she didn’t actually use a key to open the front door. It had been left unlocked. She rushed in so thoughtlessly it might have even been left open.

  Sierra proceeded deeper into the house with cautious step.
She began climbing the stairs one foot after another. Both hands clutched the banisters as if she could rip it off and use it to club any potential burglars. It was a cowardly state of vigilance yet she knew little else to do as she walked bit by bit toward the shadow at the top of the stairs. She’d never seen it like that before, it was as if those steps at the top had been swallowed to another dimension and only darkness remained like a staircase to nowhere.

  When she did reach top the darkness cleared. She glanced about the landing for signs of struggle yet found everything as normal. She tried calling again.

  “John? Are you hiding? I don’t like being surprised.”

  John’s bedroom door had been left ajar. Sierra could see through the opening to a figure on the other side. It was dark in his room, darker than the landing. She couldn’t really see the figure only hear noises it made – something like creaking.

  On one tap from her tiny hand, the bedroom door swung open slowly.

  John was on the other side. He hung in the air, noose tied at the throat over a fallen stool. He swayed left to right in tune with that sickly creaking sound. His skin was stark pale, face ham-locked into a twisted scream. His eyes bulged wide with an empty glare that tore straight through the child in the doorway.

  Paramedics didn’t arrive until close to her bedtime, roughly nine o clock. Sierra couldn’t remember if she had called them herself or merely slumped crying to the curb for any passer-by to respond. There was a missing space of memory between the time she stood at John’s bedroom door to the time she sat at the end of the driveway watching that sealed bag being wheeled out.

  By that time Sierra slipped into a state of quietness as to distance herself from the man in the bag. When those paramedics did arrive first they regarded her with passive glances as if to any curious onlooker. She didn’t make any effort to rectify it. She merely stayed back, watching. They could have asked her to move along and she would have easily obliged. They never asked simply because they barely noticed her. She was like a tiny shadow sat at the end of the driveway.

  The paramedics had wheeled him about halfway up the driveway when a woman screamed John’s name. Sierra could remember Maria rushing by her.

  Sierra watched Maria run to grab the black bag despite the paramedics’ lax restraint. Maria fell on the bag and for a few moments those paramedics let her.