Burned

by Meg Watson

  “Um, okay.”

  “Come on, lighten up!” Bruno chuckles as he navigates the Armada toward the interstate.

  I can’t help but be a little more relaxed around him, though my stomach is in knots that seem to continually twist and writhe. Bruno has always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. He’s probably the nicest bookie in the Family.

  “You know, I hear Two-Fist has already dropped thirty pounds or something. Dante probably saved his life. It’s supposed to be a secret though, so don’t tell anybody.”

  I plaster a smile to my face. Lightening up isn’t something I seem to be good at, anymore.

  “Well, I guess that’s good, getting healthy and all. It’s nice you did that for him. And it’s nice you’re doing this for us, Bruno, it really is. Let's just get to the airport. No… The train station. We’ll do it old-movie style.”

  “Okay, one old-fashioned train escape coming right up.”

  “I’m not escaping, Bruno,” I grumble.

  He jerks his chin, his way of telling me I am full of it.

  “Sure looks like you are. Looks like you have a whole plan, sis. Because as I was already sitting there, by request of your friend Rita… I got a text from Alphonso.”

  “Uh-huh,” I sigh.

  I cast my gaze out the window, trying to memorize it. It is going to be a long time before I am going to see this all again. Hopefully never, if all goes as planned.

  “So the official order came to me from Alphonso. And then another order came from Aldo. So my question has gotta be, what kind of shit did my sweet little sister get herself into?”

  “I’m not that sweet.”

  “Evidently not.”

  “You know… I thought you weren't supposed to ask questions. Just like, direct me to the safe house or whatever.”

  He shrugs. His eyes dart around the people on the sidewalks as we pause at a light, looking at everybody all at once. Like he is flipping cards from a deck, just making mental notes. The light turns green, and he guns it aggressively.

  “Normally that is the case. But to my sister, I got rights. I get to ask questions.”

  “And I guess I don't have any rights, huh?”

  “Well, you are just a girl, after all.”

  “That's what they keep telling me.”

  “So,” he says slowly, “exactly what kind of trouble did you get yourself into, then?”

  My eyes cut back toward Gus. I shake my head until Bruno sees the gesture and sighs, giving up.

  “Fine,” he mutters under his breath, “but this is not over. We are going to have a discussion about this.”

  “Is that a direct order from my Don?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

  Bruno shakes his head. Becoming an Underboss has to be one of his top ten biggest fears. He is thrilled to be a bookie and I know if he gets his way, he’ll stay right there. There’s no way he wants to fill our father’s shoes. He’d rather do mountains of paperwork than have all that political garbage to swim through.

  While we drive, Bruno keeps it light. I know he knows this is serious. He cranks the radio and sings along until Gus is giggling uncontrollably. It makes me feel so much better, to have that bit of help.

  As soon as he gets out of the car in the train station parking lot, Bruno goes right back to being all business. He opens the rear door for Gus and helps him down with an affectionate but perfunctory smile. Swinging the rear door wide, he shoulders three of the bags at once over his muscular arm. When he grabs the last, black duffel, he bounces it in his hand suspiciously.

  “What you got in here, sis?” he asks as I come around the back of the vehicle.

  I stand behind Gus and give Bruno a meaningful, wide-eyed glare. “Just the essentials,” I answer tersely.

  “Oh yeah? Feels like about 75,000 essentials, if I'm not mistaken.”

  I purse my lips and shake my head. It seems like Bruno is intent on sharing more information with Gus than I think is strictly necessary.

  But Gus is unconcerned. He pockets his game and slips a half size Rubik's cube out of his hoodie. He doesn't even look at it. His fingers just work at the puzzle automatically as he looks around the garage.

  “We don't want to miss our train,” I say pointedly.

  Bruno sucks his teeth. He slams the liftgate shut. “Good thing you decided on the train. Last thing I want to do is spend the afternoon in Customs with some NSA drone’s fingers stuffed up my butt.”

  “Bruno!”

  “What, the kid never heard the words up my butt before?”

  “Jesus, Bruno,” I growl, steering Gus toward the double doors.

  Bruno walks a half-step ahead, his head swiveling smartly from left to right as he squints at the departure and ticketing agent signs until he finds what he wants. He guides the three of us to the shortest line and bobs his head once.

  “So where are we going?” I ask in a low voice, my hand pressed to Gus’s chest to keep him close to me. Sometimes when he is playing with his Rubik's cube or something he can wander off. I like to keep a close tab on him.

  “First we’re going to Oriental. After that… It's just need-to-know.”

  “Don't I need to know?” I reply archly.

  “Yeah, but I don't. I get you there and hand you off to your next escort. He gets you to wherever. The next one gets you to wherever else.”

  “Ah, I guess that makes sense,” I mumble.

  “Yeah, that way if I get roughed up, there's no way I could tell him your location.”

  “Don't joke about that, Bruno. Seriously. It's not funny.”

  “Or like, if the Feds come banging on my door. Plausible deniability. It's a thing.”

  I roll my eyes and huff my breath out my nose as we take another small step forward in line.

  “So you're really not going to tell me?” he asks, cutting his eyes toward me. “I drop everything to do this for you, and you're not even going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “It's nothing, Bruno. I already told you.”

  I press my lips tight together and slowly look over a group of Amish travelers. They seem so out of place among the college kids and commuters with their heads ducked toward their smart phones. The Amish just look around in their hats and bonnets and dorky eyeglasses, standing there like weird museum artifacts. I know exactly how that feels.

  “They should have made you a Capo, Charli,” he sighs wryly. “Nobody keeps a secret like you.”

  I have to hold my breath to keep from laughing at that. He’s right, absolutely. I’m so full of secrets I sometimes feel like I could burst like a tick.

  “So what's the Oriental?” I ask, stifling the urge to giggle. “Is that a guy?”

  Bruno pushes a hand forward indicating that I should step ahead into the blank space in the line. There is only one more couple before us, trying to figure out how to take three trains and end up in some infernal part of Wyoming, apparently.

  “The Oriental? That's a place, not a guy. North Carolina.”

  I grimace. “North Carolina? Ugh. Well, I’ve never been there, but it sure sounds far. Actually, have I ever been out of Annapolis? Oh, wait, yes I have… summer camp. But have I ever been out of Maryland?”

  He shrugs. Craning his head around to look at the ticket agent, he pulls a face and snorts through his nose. Apparently the couple in front of us are getting on his nerves.

  “How the hell would I know, Charli? Didn’t you ever go anywhere? Like with Sammy or Derek? Or before that with Nico or… Hey, I'm sorry. Nevermind,” he finishes quickly.

  “No, no, it's okay,” I reassure him.

  There’s no reason for him to be apologizing. I’m ready to turn over new leaf. One that doesn’t involve being so careful about everything I have to say and do all the time.

  One that doesn't involve everybody avoiding mentioning my two dead fiancés. My dead father. My lack of standing in the family. My miraculous son, who appeared in a shockingly abrupt fashion.

  Everybody has theo
ries on who the father is, but I managed never to tell. And Gus looks just like me, which both quells and fuels family speculation. Could be anybody.

  But when we get to where we are going, wherever that is, we are going to start all over. Pick a story and stick to it. Maybe the truth, even. Or, maybe something sort of like the truth but different where it has to be. Better when possible.

  Actually, we can be anybody. We can be Rosenbergs from New Jersey. I figure we could pass for northern European, even. I can develop a Swedish back story and move us both to Minnesota. That could be fun. Gus has always liked sledding, skating.

  “The point is that there's nothing in Oriental,” Bruno sighs, nodding as the couple in front of us finishes up. “It's some kind of fishing town bullshit. There's a few of the guys there. You remember Knuckles?”

  “Um, do I? Yeah, maybe I do,” I agree. I sort of remember him as some figure sitting with my father in the semi-dark front room of our brownstone. He had kind of a high voice for such a big guy. A neat bald spot circled the very top of his head.

  “Yeah, well, I know he made it out there,” Bruno continues. “It's all picturesque and whatnot. Think there's a few of the old guys living there. Just doing their thing, living among the people. Hope you like seafood.”

  I nod distractedly as the ticket agent waves us over. Bruno shifts the bags to his left side with just a little bit of effort. He mumbles to the agent, sliding him an American Express black card. He taps absentmindedly on the stainless steel counter. Eventually the agent smiles back and pushes three folded itineraries toward him, then waves at the sniffling white couple behind me.

  “Gate 23,” Bruno mumbles, waving at me to follow closely behind him and handing me the tickets to hold.

  I take Gus's hand and keep as close to Bruno as possible without getting jostled by my own bags. He leads us forward at a quick pace, his head pivoting left and right to sweep the crowd over and over again.

  We walk past the handicapped car and Bruno holds up a hand to stop me. “Go on in,” he says. He hands me the black duffel with a wink. “You might want to keep this one with you. I'll give the others to the baggage guy.”

  “Handicapped car? But we're not gonna —”

  “It's just for old people,” he explains. “It’s quiet. Nobody's gonna bother us, and probably nobody in there can even hear us talking. Plus the bathrooms are a lot nicer.”

  I nod my understanding and guide Gus toward the train car door, then up the wide stairs. When I yank open the heavy the cabin door, a whoosh of grandma-scented air bellows out at us.

  Though the rest of the train had been crowded with young travelers and their Gypsy-like packs, this one is almost empty, just as Bruno had predicted. There is an old couple at the very last seat who glance up at us over their matching reading glasses and then back down to their matching iPads. Another lady in a cheery, blue polkadotted suit with a matching hat shifts her stuffed grocery bags off the seat and grins at Gus in invitation.

  I give the lady an apologetic smile and instead guide Gus to the empty group of four seats that face each other by the front window. Gus immediately sits down and presses his nose to the window glass. I drop into the seat across from him, pressing the bottoms of my sneakers against the bottoms of his sneakers and pushing at his toes lightly. He automatically pushes back, one at a time in a bicycling motion.

  “This pretty cool, right?” I ask him, eyebrows raised and ready for his agreement. “Going on our first trip, Gussie. Our first real trip.”

  “Yeah, this is the coolest,” he says, his breath fogging up the glass. He pauses and draws his head back thoughtfully, then opens his mouth and breathes out a lungful of warm air, leaving a cloud on the glass. Immediately he picks up his index finger and begins drawing dots with a wide crescent underneath. Then he circles the whole thing and surrounds it with rays. A big, smiling sun.

  “The coolest,” I repeat, happy for more reasons than I can even figure out. “Yes indeed. Hey so… Let’s play a game, okay?”

  His eyes flicker toward me, intrigued. There's nothing like a game to get Gus's interest up. “What kinda game?”

  I knit my fingers together and twist them, thinking how to describe it. “Kinda like follow the leader, I guess,” I start. “Like, whatever I do you gotta follow it, okay?”

  “Follow the leader is a preschool game, Mama. I’m six. First grade.” He screws his mouth sideways and looks back out the window. Craning his head, he peers far down the tracks one way, then far down the tracks the other way. There have to be hundreds of people outside on the platform, all waiting to go here and there. Just anywhere.

  “Okay, well it's just like follow the leader. Not exactly follow the leader. It's a lot harder.”

  He turns his head to raise his eyebrows at me briefly. He doesn’t seem particularly convinced I am making this game challenging enough.

  “Okay, so… Whatever I say, you gotta follow along. Even if it's weird.”

  He shrugs noncommittally. The pad of his forefinger drags around the dissolving image of the sun and he breathes new life into it.

  “So like if I say your name is Bubblegum Turkey Sandwich, you gotta go along with it. If I say you’re the prince of the moon, you gotta agree. If I say we’re going to run fifty steps toward the end of a bridge, you gotta go along with it. Know what I'm saying?”

  “Yeah. This is a lying game.”

  I squirm in my seat. “It's not lying; it's a game. Besides… It’s not lying if your mom tells you to do it. That's the law.”

  He shrugs again. I can feel his discomfort. Truth-telling is of course a major topic of discussion in his small private school. But how else can I explain I need his obedience?

  If I just said that I needed it, would he do it? Or would he still think it was up for discussion? I couldn't really be sure. He is by nature a pretty forthright and plainspoken kid, when he feels like talking at all. Lying doesn’t come naturally to him, at least not yet.

  A shadow passes over my mood. I hope this isn’t another one of those lifetime burdens I’m giving him, like raising him around a bunch of wiseguys. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be the moment where I trained him to be a liar. It’s just to get us where we’re going.

  And anyway, it is just another one of those temporary things that is only meant to last to the end of the trip. After this, we could be anywhere. Anybody. People who tell the truth forevermore.

  “So we got a deal? You think you can handle it?”

  He nods briefly, but I can tell I have already lost his interest.

  “All right, then I name you Carnation Breezybutt, Prince of the Android Garbage Pickers.”

  “Okay,” he sighs.

  “What's your name again?”

  He rolls his eyes dramatically and perches his tiny, fisted hand on his hip. “Carnation Breezybutt, Prince of the Android Garbage Pickers.”

  He kind of squeezes up his face, trying not to laugh. I nod encouragingly and pinch the tip of his nose. “Pleased to meet you, your highness.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Queen of the Garbage Pickers,” he says, giggling softly.

  I widen my eyes, pantomiming shock and horror until he gives a laugh that sounds authentic and thorough.

  The train lurches gently. I look around the platform through the window. I realize that I am in the forward facing seats, and Gus will be the opposite way. I’ve heard that causes motion sickness and wave at him to come toward me.

  “Hey, switch seats with me. You don't want to ride backwards.”

  He nods enthusiastically and swaps seats, happy to have a fresh corner of the window to huff steam onto. I peer into the crowd, trying to find Bruno. Strangers mill about in groups of two or three.

  A chunking sound underneath our feet seems to indicate that the luggage doors are being closed. We can only be a couple of minutes away from departure.

  “Where’s Uncle Bruno?” he says, distracted by his artwork.

  “Yeah, I’m sure he’s on his w
ay…”

  My eyes sweep back and forth like a searchlight. Instinctively I track a group of three leather-jacketed guys as they cut diagonally across the platform in a hurry. All of them wear sunglasses, even though the light that filters down from the giant skylights is dimmed and silvery. My eyes race ahead of their path, and at the end, I find the back of Bruno's black suit coat.

  He has his arms crossed in front of him, away from me as though he is facing purposefully in the wrong direction. He is just steps from the other train on the opposite side of the platform, talking with three different men who also wear sunglasses. I can't hear anything of course, but watch them nod and squint at each other, obviously suspicious.

  As the three motorcycle jackets approach, my pulse quickens. Those three men meet the first three men and block Bruno completely from view, encircling him.

  I hold my breath and glance at Gus, who is enthralled by his steam tree. My fingers claw at the windowsill as I swallow back a gasp.

  “All aboard!” the conductor bellows.

  The group of six splits up, three on either side of Bruno. They begin walking briskly toward the exit, and I hear the train doors roll shut. Bruno never even looks in my direction, never even waves. He isn't giving away our location, and I instantly know what that means.

  As the train begins to roll out of the station, we catch up to Bruno's group and then pass them. My fingers splay helplessly against the window glass as I try not to cry out. His expression is neutral but resolute.

  The train plunges out of the station and into the sunlight, and I gape at Bruno’s tiny, receding figure, until I can’t see him anymore.

  DAY 2 - TEK

  My German Shepherd trots between the small dinette set and the kitchen sink over and over. He pauses at the sink and sniffs around the edges of the cabinets then pads back to the table and sticks his snout under the bottom of the leg. Back and forth a couple more times and then he sniffs a perimeter, following the wall until he bumps into the sofa in my tiny living room. He drags himself along the front of the sofa in a sneaky crawl and wedges his head just under my relaxed hand.

  Automatically, without fully waking up, I rub gently at Trapper’s skull, stroking his long ears to the point. He pants happily for a few seconds until the stroking stops, and then he nudges at me again.