Done Dirt Cheap

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  She turned her eyes to the ceiling. Her count was never off. Not even by a penny. He insisted on counting it three times, every time. But she’d always been good with the numbers.

  She’d walked into Hazard’s office as payment against the $1,822.15 legal bill her mother had accrued during a DUI. No one thought her worth much at that point—she was a scrawny, tall girl-child who could barely stand to look anyone in the eye.

  But Hazard had looked her up and down, sucked on his teeth, and agreed to the deal. He’d put her to work with his last pageant girl and, somehow, magic happened. Scrawny became lithe. Tall became fierce. Girl-child skipped straight to woman. Her mother had simply been desperate, but Hazard had known Virginia was worth more than a petty legal bill. In return for his faith, she’d worked hard and stayed loyal.

  And she never forgot the eighteen hundred twenty-two dollars and fifteen cents, or messed up her count.

  “I met Tourmaline Harris,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Calvin Harris’s daughter.”

  He paused for a moment. Frozen with a stack of twenties fluttering in the air-conditioning. Numbers dropped off his mouth. He blinked at the pile.

  Virginia smiled. “Eleven sixty.”

  He gathered up the pile, licked his finger, and started over. “Oh, I see.” He tsked softly.

  “She was in my class at school.” Virginia watched carefully under her eyelashes.

  He finished counting out the stack and picked it up, shuffling the bills into his palm and carefully rubbing the edges to unstick them. “Is this girl hanging out with her dad’s club or something?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Seems odd.”

  “Well . . . ,” Virginia hedged.

  He looked at her over the edge of the bills. “Does this girl know anything?”

  “She’s the president’s daughter,” Virginia snapped. Tourmaline had to know something. “She said they’re not one-percenters.”

  He shook his head, annoyed. “None of that bullshit motorcycle club law applies to what they are.”

  “What are they?”

  “Dangerous.” He went back to counting. “They don’t like people like you and me. I told you to befriend them, not their goddamn family.”

  “People like us? She said they weren’t criminals. It was very clearly explained.”

  He smirked. “And every teenage girl knows everything always.”

  She clenched her jaw tight and began scanning the boxes in the filing room to calm down. Roughly a year ago, she’d caught a glimpse of a gun hidden in one of the file boxes, and every time she had to sit there and suffer through his counts or his condescending dialogue zingers from whatever dull episode she was stuck inside, she would recite the number in tiny beige print at the left-hand corner back to herself, looking for it. 7602XF-1842066.

  “Virginia.” His sharp command brought her eyes to his. Gaze unflinching. “Make friends. You’re a friendly girl. This is simple.” That same heavy gaze dropped slowly. Sizing her up the way he did everything else—though he never found fault with her body. “That’s why I sent you.”

  There was no question what she was supposed to do.

  Virginia’s throat tightened and she didn’t say anything. Easy and simple, probably. But it felt like a boundary marking the end of something. A place she’d known she’d come to, someday.

  “Are they outlaws?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What exactly do they do?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at the stack—counting to a whole number before glancing over. “They are predatory.”

  “Yeah?” Virginia ran her fingers through her hair, shaking out some of the tangles. “In what way?”

  “They own too much of southern Virginia. It’s constricting with them around.”

  Virginia rolled her eyes. Sometimes it seemed as if half of her problems were simply due to posturing.

  “Nothing goes on here without the Wardens knowing. I don’t want them to know what I’m doing. And the way you sell shit to someone is with a pretty woman.” He waved a stack of fives in her direction. “We’re moving on to bigger things, Virginia Campbell.”

  “Restructuring,” she said flatly.

  “Get the Wardens to pay more attention to you than to me, and both of us are going to get out of this shithole of peddling the same pills over and over again. Find a way into their parties, into their homes, into their lives, and make them love you. Make them bow down and worship at the altar of a beautiful woman.”

  The same shudder rolled deep in Virginia’s stomach.

  “Stop jerking around with this child.” He waved his hand into the air as if brushing Tourmaline out of the way. “And when they’re in love with you, come back and tell me who they are, who they’re loyal to, who they hate. I didn’t pick you just because you’re gorgeous. You’re smart. You can hold your own there.”

  The flattery was true—she hoped—and Virginia softened to it. “And when I finish courting your wolves?”

  “I’ma take care of you,” he answered.

  “You’ve said that before, you know.”

  He eyed her. Licked his thumb.

  A chill ran down her arms.

  “I won’t have your usual stuff here tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll need to come by the house. Nine sharp.”

  She nodded.

  Turning, he started in on a third count. “Go get me supper while I finish counting this. Three-piece meal from Moe’s. White meat. Biscuit. Greens. Get extra butter.” He pulled out his wallet and took out a fifty. “Keep the change for gas. A bonus. My prettiest employee. And one of my best.” He gripped her hand as he handed over the bill.

  Virginia stood with her throat thick, allowing her hand to be held until he released both her and the money. She pulled out her phone and headed out, texting Tourmaline. You busy?

  Virginia waited with the phone in her palm. It stayed silent. Come on, she urged the screen. Laughter shrilled outside her truck windows and she lifted her head to two women on the corner just past Hazard’s office.

  Danylynn and Wave. They tugged down their tank tops and yanked up their shorts, long trails of cigarette smoke hanging like wispy clouds around them in the sultry streetlight. They were Hazard’s, but never came close to his door. He’d made complaints about them to the police, even. Which was smart. The light changed. The cars sped through the intersection, not slowing. Danylynn leaned against the telephone pole. A train whistled and the railroad crossing began dinging. Virginia’s stomach rolled. If Hazard thought himself the hero of some country crime show, there was no question what role she played. She tossed the phone and started the truck. Hazard was waiting for his dinner.

  At the drive-thru, the text lit on her screen. Come and get me.

  “My, you look dressed up tonight,” Anna May said when Tourmaline came up the church sidewalk.

  Tourmaline’s stomach twisted and she stopped and looked down at her dress. She hadn’t realized until just then she’d dressed for the double date with Allen and Anna May and Dalton afterward, not for Saturday night youth group.

  “Your boobs look great,” Anna May continued from the steps, where she stood greeting everyone; she was in jeans and a simple cotton top the color of freshly mowed grass.

  “I just wanted a reason to wear it. Look, it’s got pockets.” Tourmaline demonstrated the pockets in the skirt of the gathered and flared cotton voile dress. At least she’d worn her boots instead of wedges. “It’s not too low, right?”

  “It’s a little low.”

  Tourmaline frowned and yanked up the front.

  “Hang out?” Anna May nodded at the church steps, brown curls stirring in the breeze. “Hardly anyone’s here tonight.”

  “That’s because they’re all doing better things on a gorgeous Saturday night.” Tourmaline sat on the edge of the step and tucked her hands under her skirt.

  Anna May rolled her eyes.

  Beulah Baptist Church was one of t
hose pretty, white-steepled country churches in the rolling valley outside of Iron Gate. Neither the church nor the sprawling view of the valley and mountains had changed since Tourmaline used to come in tights and patent dress shoes, holding Mom’s hand.

  “Did you get your financial aid forms sent in?” Anna May asked.

  “Last week.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Did you pick a roommate?” Tourmaline finally asked.

  Anna May ran the delicate silver necklace Dalton had given her when they were fifteen over her fingers. “Not until July.”

  Tourmaline nodded.

  The sparrows nesting in the dogwoods in the flower beds chirped in their silence.

  Tourmaline stared at her feet. She hadn’t told Anna May about being banned. She couldn’t. She searched for something to share that would be personal enough to buy back their usual intimacy. “Wayne’s home.”

  Anna May kept circling the chain around her fingers. Staring expectantly.

  “So . . . fuck my life,” Tourmaline prompted.

  Anna May tilted her head toward the open doors. “Really? The language? Pastor JD could hear you, you know.”

  Tourmaline frowned.

  “So, he’s out,” Anna May said. “Does that mean your mom will be out soon?”

  “No.”

  Anna May looked confused, but she just nodded. “Well, that stinks. Did she like the photos?”

  Tourmaline nodded automatically.

  “Is Allen coming tonight or just meeting us afterward?”

  Tourmaline cleared her throat. “He said he might be a little late because of training.” He was set to play ball at the University of Florida, and he trained after he finished working on his family’s farm.

  “Mm-hm.” Anna May raised an eyebrow.

  Tourmaline didn’t hear her to argue, lost tracing the path that kept her mother in prison—along ruptured discs, to failed surgeries and more and more pain meds, and . . . somehow, somewhere . . . into heroin. Ending with the shell of her mother sitting across the bolted-down table, chewing her fingernails under thin fluorescents. Her terrible prison dye job showing six inches of black roots. Her eyes sharp and unseeing, sometimes clear, but tinged with ever-present pain.

  Tourmaline had shown her pictures of Allen in an effort to grasp for a sense of normal by sharing a boy who was not special. They both knew this boy was not a boy who would come visit. Who would put his hands on the concrete, and spread his legs, and bend his head in submission. Mom had liked the pictures anyway. When they said good-bye, Tourmaline had headed back to Virginia to face the boy alone. To face Anna May alone. To face her life with only the ghost of a mother.

  “Are you guys dating yet?”

  Tourmaline blinked at Anna May’s waiting expression. She pushed away her sadness with practiced ease. “Anna May, you ask me the same damn questions these days.”

  Anna May sighed. “You don’t date. Yeah. Okay.”

  “It’s low-key. Not all of us have to be you and Dalton.”

  “If you didn’t lie to your—”

  “It’s not as much about Dad as you think.” Tourmaline narrowed her eyes. “Do you think Allen wants to meet him like a boyfriend? After everything?”

  “I think Allen should man up.”

  Tourmaline rolled her eyes. “He’s going to UF. I’m going to UVA. There’s no reason for him to go through that nonsense. I don’t want to go through that.”

  “Then why are y’all wasting your time?”

  Tourmaline didn’t answer.

  “Are you hooking up?” Anna May asked, with her judgment only thinly veiled.

  “Okay,” Tourmaline said, standing up. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  “Tourmaline.”

  “Great talk. Can’t wait,” Tourmaline called behind her, only feeling a little guilty.

  Pastor JD caught her coming down the steps, putting his hand on her arm to stop her. He made such a big fuss over how she was doing that pressure built in her chest as if she were being suffocated.

  The interaction had been like that for a while—she remembered that now. Between visits, it’d slipped her mind, only to surprise her again.

  After he moved on, Tourmaline hid behind the church, wishing she had a cigarette, until Allen texted, looking for her.

  Conversation was easier with Anna May once they began again at putt-putt and ice cream after youth group ended. But nothing relieved the sense of weight in her bones. The feeling that she might suddenly lift up her putt-putt club and whack someone over the head simply for enjoying themselves.

  The wind came down the mountains and wandered through the stalks of the hayfield beside the putt-putt course, drowning out the bugs with a gentle rushing sound. She leaned on her club and watched Allen as he swung his club back and forth under the lights like a bat. The shadows flickered across his long arms, and the intensity of her frustration billowed under and out into something else entirely.

  “I like your dress,” he whispered as they walked back to get ice cream. His breath stirred the loose strands of her ponytail, curling in the humid night, and he smelled faintly of sweet feed and aquatic cologne.

  She looked over her shoulder, caught his eye, and grinned. It suddenly felt as if the night itself were her path and her power was nearly bursting her skin.

  Anna May slid to Tourmaline’s side as the boys went to deliver the clubs; Tourmaline hugged her tight in silent agreement that the tension earlier was already forgiven.

  “I can’t believe this is our last summer like this. We have to hang out more often, while we still can.” Anna May rested her head on Tourmaline’s shoulder. “This is the end. We’re leaving. Finally, right?” She laughed.

  Tourmaline’s gaze flickered to the crisp edge of the mountains—they stood midnight against the lingering deep ocher leftovers of sunset, as if the night came from them and not from the sky. “Yeah,” she agreed softly. “I’m excited.”

  “We’ll have to do our school shopping together, okay?”

  “Oh my God, yes.” Tourmaline squeezed her tight. “I wish we were going to the same school.”

  “We can visit, though.”

  Tourmaline nodded, refusing to believe it would happen until it did. Anna May was going to school with Dalton. Sometimes it seemed certain they would continue always just as they had, and other times it was impossible to ignore that their paths were diverging even while they stayed in the same place. “I’m going to use the bathroom real quick,” she said, pulling away.

  “I’m getting your ice cream. Teaberry—”

  “—in a pretzel cone,” Tourmaline said at the same time as Anna May.

  They laughed.

  “I got you.” Anna May waved her off as Dalton and Allen came back.

  Tourmaline headed toward the parking lot for the bathrooms. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. You busy? From Virginia.

  And in that second, it all flooded back.

  She’d been fourteen and lying—saying she was spending the night with Anna May when sneaking off to stay with her mom. She’d been angry with her dad. Missing a boyfriend. Missing a mother and not quite comprehending what had taken her.

  Mom had been staying at her dealer-slash-boyfriend’s house in Roanoke. Wayne’s house.

  One night, Tourmaline woke and couldn’t find her. That wasn’t unusual, but she’d pulled up her dad’s number and gripped her phone tight as she searched the run-down house, knowing she would someday confess her lies in order to protect her mom. Knowing Dad’d come save them both. “Call me,” he’d always told her. “I’ll take care of her.”

  The night had been hot. Eighties. Wayne was passed out on the couch, but Tourmaline’s mom wasn’t in the house. Not on the porch where she sometimes liked to sit. It was so hot the sidewalk was still warm under Tourmaline’s bare feet.

  Tourmaline found her mother in the passenger seat of Wayne’s burgundy Oldsmobile, her tangled hair splayed out against the velvet seat. Tourmaline’s tre
mbling fingers couldn’t find a pulse. A passing train drowned out the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.

  It was the first time she’d ever called 911. Not her dad. It’d seemed obvious in the moment.

  The cops showed up before the ambulance. She watched as her mother startled awake and freaked out. More cops came. They pulled her mother out of the car. Then a gun. Then a laundry basket’s worth of heroin.

  Tourmaline stood on her bare feet in the patchy grass of the vacant lot and watched it all happen. Her actions in motion. How many times had Dad told her, “Call me if your mom is in trouble. Call me, so no one can take your mom. We will take care of her.”

  She’d brought the cops there and then they were all beyond her father’s reach. And because of that, Tourmaline knew she needed Virginia’s help. It had been her responsibility to make the right call and she had failed. She couldn’t afford to fail again.

  The screen dimmed. Her fingers hovered over the keys, but she didn’t type a reply. The dark humidity was heavy on her skin, as if breathing tight against her.

  Tourmaline knew what Virginia needed. A show. But how could she offer one? It wasn’t as if she could just arrive at the Wardens’ clubhouse with a friend and ask to hang out. Was there any place in her father’s world she could go?

  Shoving the phone back into her pocket, she turned the corner for the women’s bathroom. The fluorescent lights over the concrete building hummed in a way that reminded her of Hazelton and made her shiver to hear the girls’ voices echoing from inside the winding concrete hallway.

  A man’s voice called from the shadows at the edge of the lot. It was familiar. As if he were calling for her. Tourmaline turned, half expecting a Warden.

  “I said, ‘Well, aren’t you having fun?’”

  She froze. The world fell away.

  Wayne.

  His untied boots crunched the gravel, footsteps falling silent as he stepped onto the concrete walk in the light. He looked older than she remembered, though his eyes were the same—unearthly and sharp. As if he were part nocturnal creature with a gift of evasion. He wore a clean shirt and too-big shorts, but it was impossible not to remember, immediately, the sight of him belly-down in the street in Roanoke, hands cuffed, in his underwear and socks.