by Laura McNeal
“Hey!” Trina says. “This freaking spazter groped me!”
K.C. shoves Carlito backward.
“Get back, mutant!” K.C. yells. Carlito is tall and solid, so the shove hasn’t moved him much.
“Stay here with them,” Lana turns to tell Tilly, and she tries to get across the street fast enough to take Carlito’s hand, but K.C. isn’t finished. The fact that Carlito is still standing, that his mouth is still open, seems to incense K.C., and he steps forward and gives another hard shove. This time Carlito is standing so close to the curb that he falls backward into the street and his head cracks against the pavement.
Francine must have been watching, because she comes running out from Rodeo Meats as fast as a fat woman can. “I’m going to call the cops on you, K.C. Miller,” she screams. “You leave them kids alone.”
“He tried to molest me!” Trina shouts back.
“I’m calling Terwilliger!” Francine yells. “I’m calling him right now!” And she goes back inside as if to show she means what she says.
Tilly, Garth, and Alfred have drifted out of the pharmacy, and when Lana turns around, she sees that they’re all in the street, and the girl from Helton’s Drugs has followed them to the door, where she stands staring.
“Get in the car,” K.C. tells Trina. “Let’s go.”
The emerald green Buick LeSabre glints in the sun in front of the market, and Lana is disgusted that she ever wished to ride in its front seat. As K.C. leads Trina by the arm past the group, Tilly says, “You’re a bully, yes, you are. I saw it. You pushed.”
When K.C. turns his handsome head Tilly’s way, his lips curl back from his teeth and he says something in a low, snarly voice that is so profane Lana can hardly believe she’s heard it.
“Suck me dry,” he says.
Tilly seems stricken.
“What?” Lana yells at K.C. “What did you just say?”
But K.C. has recovered himself, and, turning to Spink, fakes a laugh and says, “What about it, Spinko, don’t we have a policy about talking to Fosters?” and Spink says, “Indeed we do.” The Shetland pony boy gives this a big, knowing laugh, like this is an old joke he’s already in on.
Tilly’s face is contorted—she’s trying not to cry. A middle-aged woman standing outside the post office looks on in what appears to be fright, a small bundle of envelopes in her hand. Beyond her, the sky is furred with strips of humid clouds. The asphalt of Main Street is hot enough to heat up the bottom of Lana’s tennis shoes as she crouches beside Carlito, who’s holding the back of his head. His elbow oozes crimson blood. The LeSabre squeals away down Main Street. When Lana glances again toward the post office, the woman with the envelopes has disappeared.
Lana’s hands are sticky with blood, and Carlito has begun crying, blubbering, actually, a childlike weeping that makes his cheeks, nose, and chin wet. Otherwise it’s eerily quiet, with Garth and Tilly and Alfred all standing a little back, staring.
Lana hears a single car approaching on the street, and when she turns, she sees it’s Veronica’s white Monte Carlo, and it stops mid-block. But it’s not Veronica who gets out.
It’s Chet.
“Hey, padre,” he says, kneeling right down by Carlito, who has added a whimper to his weeping. “How’re you doing?”
Carlito shakes his head miserably.
Chet’s wearing an old burgundy button-down shirt open over a ribbed T-shirt. He takes off the button-down and uses it to start soaking up the blood.
“You’ll get that dirty, Chet,” Tilly says, and Chet without looking up from his work says, “It was already red, Tilly.” Which, Lana can see, is only in the loosest sense true, because the reds of the blood and the shirt are different. When Chet has cleared away most of the blood, he begins to daub the dirt, blood, and mucus from Carlito’s cheeks, and Carlito’s crying begins to slacken. Chet cleans the cut on Carlito’s elbow—the cut isn’t big—and Chet, to Lana’s surprise, pulls a Band-Aid out of his wallet and presses it over the cut.
“Better?” Lana says.
Carlito nods. When he breathes out, a mucousy bubble forms from one nostril; when he breathes back in, it disappears. He lets Chet and Lana help him up, and they guide him to the backseat of Veronica’s car with the other Snicks following. As Chet and Lana gather up the plastic sacks of groceries and set them into the trunk, the girl from the drugstore brings out a small paper bag and hands it to Lana. “It’s the prescription,” she says. “Mr. Helton says you can just pay for it next time.”
“So what happened?” Chet says once they’re on their way, with Lana scooched next to Chet, Garth beside her but not touching her, and the other three in back.
“What didn’t?” Lana says. “The final straw was Carlito trying to bless Trina. She moved and he touched her boob or something. She screamed bloody murder and K.C., her big freaking hero, beat up on poor Carlito for her.”
Chet is quiet for a few seconds and then he says, “Some people just don’t deserve to be blessed.”
Lana thinks about telling him what K.C. said to Tilly, but the words are too horrible to say out loud. So she says, “There was somebody I’ve never seen before with K.C. and them. A buff kid with a big head and long blond hair. He reminded me of a Shetland pony.”
This gets a good laugh from Chet. “That’s some guy they call Lido, a big steroid freak. He wants to go to L.A. and be in porno movies.” Chet makes a wry grin. “And to think some people just want to be president or go to medical school.”
As they turn off Main Street, a sheriff’s car turns onto it, traveling at a leisurely pace. Griff Terwilliger, behind the wheel, doesn’t even flick their packed Monte Carlo a glance. He’s working a toothpick in his mouth, fussily, like there’s something back there in the molars that’s really giving him trouble.
“Guess that’d be your Crime Scene Investigative Unit,” Lana says, which gets another laugh from Chet. She likes sitting next to him. With his smooth tanned arms flowing out of his white sleeveless T-shirt, he reminds her of one of those young farmhands or work-project guys she sometimes sees in old photograph albums. Winsome pops into her head, and she nearly says, “In that shirt you look winsome,” but what would Chet do with a compliment like that? Probably just be embarrassed.
Garth is holding his Popeye up at window level so they can both stare out, his body pressed close to the door to avoid Lana’s legs and arms, so Lana decides to risk a question about Mrs. Stoneman. “So how’d it go with … your last passenger?”
“Fine. She sprang for my lunch, actually.”
This is news. “She gave you money for lunch?”
He shakes his head. “No, she took me to lunch. We went to the Fryin’ Pan.” He grins. “Had me a patty melt.”
“Did she talk?”
“Not much. Some, though.”
“What about?”
Chet shrugs. “The house, mostly.”
Lana lowers her voice even further. “And the person the passenger came to see?”
“Not so much, to be honest.”
The house, though. “What about the house?”
“Just Whit and Veronica and the other kids and stuff like that. She was interested in what had happened to Veronica.”
A faint alarm sounds within Lana. “You didn’t tell her that Veronica had been drinking, did you?”
Chet doesn’t answer, and Lana says it again. “Did you?”
“I think she already knew it,” he says in a small voice. And then, defensively, “Besides, if you didn’t want anybody to know it, why’d you tell me?”
They drive a block or so in silence. In the backseat, Tilly says, “You’re wet,” to Carlito. “Not supposed to wet yourself. It smells bad.”
It does smell bad, even with all the windows down. Lana is staring past Garth out the window trying not to smell, trying not to think, when Chet says, “Oh God.”
Lana turns.
A car has drawn up beside them, K.C.’s LeSabre, and sticking out of the rear window n
earest them is a large set of white bare buttocks. Trina is riding shotgun, and her shrieking laughter seems to stretch her face in all directions. Beyond her, K.C.’s face is red and fierce and he yells something that Lana can’t understand.
“Speed up,” she says, but when Chet speeds up, the LeSabre speeds up, and when Chet slows down, so does the LeSabre. Lana feels a mix of revulsion and fear—the bare buttocks are like a huge eyeless face staring an eyeless stare. Alfred and Tilly are laughing, Carlito is crying again, and Garth doesn’t make a sound. In the other car, K.C., red-faced, screams unintelligible insults and Trina is hysterical with laughter. Fingers appear on the sides of the bare buttocks and begin to pull them apart to expose what lies between.
Chet’s face goes suddenly to stone. He slams on the brakes, K.C. does the same, and for a long moment nothing happens—the cars, idling, stand side by side. Then, all at once, Chet jumps out, plants himself, leans back, and kicks the offending bare buttocks back into the car. And he’s not done. He moves toward Trina, whose face for a moment is frozen with fear, and then she yells, “Go! Go!” and the LeSabre squeals, fishtails, and speeds away.
When Chet gets back into the car and starts driving, Lana looks at him with disbelief. “Wow,” she says. “I’ve never known anyone before who actually kicked butt.”
A chuckle slips from Chet. Already he’s beginning to look normal again.
“So what was that?” Lana says.
He shrugs. “Dunno. Something just got into me.”
Lana looks at him. She likes what he’s just done but doesn’t want to be sappy about it. So she simply repeats his words: “Something just got into you.”
Chet keeps his eyes forward and keeps driving. “It was stupid, though,” he says. “If K.C. and Spink and that Lido guy had gotten out, I’d be the new grease spot on the road.”
“We’d’ve helped,” Lana says, then considers it. “Tried anyway.”
A short block passes in silence. Then Lana says, “So what happened? I thought those guys were your friends.”
“Yeah, well,” Chet says, and his eyes slide away. “Things change, that’s all.”
There’s more to this, Lana can feel it, but with Chet, it’s almost always like this. There’s almost always more to it. A few seconds later, he says, “The problem now is, they won’t be happy till they even this up. I kicked Lido’s butt and now they’ll need to kick mine.” He gives Lana a small unhappy smile and then looks forward. “It’ll be a pummeling.”
A few seconds go by, then Lana says, “How do you know that was the pony boy’s butt?”
Chet shrugs. “K.C. and Trina were up front, and Spink’s got a skinny little butt.”
Another short silence. They pass two boys playing catch with a football from one yard to another over a cyclone fence.
“F-f-football,” Alfred says from the backseat, and Lana says, “That’s right, Alfie. Football.” After another second or two, she turns to Chet and says, “If you could have one wish, what would it be?”
Something in Chet’s eyes gives way, and for a moment an odd, ardent expression forms, an expression Lana has seen before, mostly on girls gone gaga over some guy. But then it’s gone, and Chet says, “Guess I’d wish not to get pummeled by K.C. and those guys.”
Lana studies him for a long moment. “You got a girlfriend now, don’t you?”
Chet keeps staring forward, then he turns his head toward her. “What makes you think that?”
Lana laughs. “Girls just know these things,” she says. He’s not denying it, which is as good as saying it’s true, but still, she wants confirmation. “So am I right?”
He smiles. “Kinda.”
She laughs again. “Kinda. What does that mean, that you’ve got her hooked but not netted?”
Chet turns the Monte Carlo onto their street. “It means the subject is closed,” he says.
As they ride the last block to the house, a thought sneaks up on Lana, and after all the Snicks are out of the car and walking into the house and Chet is about to park the car in the garage, she leans back into the window and says, “Well, you won’t tell me anything about the girl, but I can tell you one thing about her.”
Chet looks at her. “Yeah? And what’s that?”
Lana grins. “That she’s lucky.”
37.
As soon as Lana returns to the house and gets Carlito cleaned up and the food put away, she puts on a video for the Snicks and sneaks up to her room. She takes out the drawing kit. She knows exactly what she wants to do. She doesn’t count pages. She takes the pencil in hand and closes her eyes and lets the calm come over her. Then she begins to draw.
A large wooden crate appears, and within the crate four bodies with four heads are soon poking out between the slats, Trina’s head, and K.C.’s, and Spink’s, and the big head and long flowing hair of the pony boy they call Lido. In another few seconds, the crate lies on a flatbed car, one of a long line of railcars that pass across the flat plains under a bare sky. On the side of the crate is a shipping label, on which in neat letters, as a final gesture, Lana’s pencil writes the single word Elsewhere.
After laying her pencil down, Lana feels the same sense of exhaustion she always feels after doing a sketch and the same sense of appreciating the skill of what’s been drawn without quite feeling that she herself has drawn it. But it’s there, and it’s done, and with any luck, it’ll save Chet and at the same time deal a little justice to K.C. and the others. A twofer.
She sits thinking for a moment of Chet. His mother ran off with a guy when he was in sixth grade, Lana knows that much, and his father was too depressed to do much but go to work and come home again, and if anybody had really ever been nice to Chet, she hadn’t seen it, and yet Chet knew exactly how to be nice to Carlito, knew exactly how to take care of him. And now Chet was gaga for some girl.
Lana turns to a fresh sheet of sketch paper. A warm feeling has spread through her in the manner of liquid or light. Chet is deserving, something good should come his way, and she wants to help him have it. She takes up her charcoal pencil. Chet appears on the page, in silhouette, and in his hand is a silhouette heart and from the side of the page two hands reach in to receive it.
Lana puts down her pencil. What she sees in front of her is simpler than the other drawings, sketchier, but it seems complete. She doesn’t know who the girl is, but she’s there, whoever she is, just beyond the edge of the paper.
Thump thump thump.
From this short distance, Lana can feel the reverberation of the thumps through the walls and floorboards, and they send through her own body three short shocks of the kind of humiliation that turns almost at once to anger.
“Okay!” she yells, but before sliding the drawing kit back under the bed, she quickly counts the remaining sheets.
Seven.
Plenty, she thinks.
Seven should be plenty.
38.
“Where were you?” Veronica says when Lana comes in.
It’s Veronica’s usual accusatory tone, but something feels different about the room, something Lana can’t put her finger on.
“I was at the market,” she says. “And Helton’s.”
Lana presents the small bag containing the prescription, along with the Rodeo Meats receipt and change, all of which Veronica takes without thanks. “I mean just now,” she says. “Where were you just now?”
“In my room, if that’s okay with you.”
“Doing what?”
“I’d prefer not to say.”
Veronica thinned her lips. “I’d prefer you did.”
Lana stares sullenly ahead.
“Speak,” Veronica says.
Lana shrugs. “Okay, then. I was taking advantage of myself.”
Veronica’s eyes go narrow and cold. And then slowly relax. “And who were you thinking about during this little exercise?”
It takes a moment for this to sink in. “You’re sick, Veronica. Truly sick.”
A quick sn
ickering expulsion of air from Veronica’s nose. She seems amused. “Disabled, actually,” she says. With one hand, she opens the stapled Helton’s bag and slides out a boxed tube of ointment and reads its prescriptive label. After rolling back the empty sleeve to expose her pink protuberant stump, she holds the tube in her teeth to unscrew the cap and then uses her teeth to squeeze ointment from the tube onto her one hand. She begins rubbing it onto the stump’s pink nub.
Lana looks around the room. Nothing’s out of place, nothing’s different, and yet it seems changed. Less light, maybe. The sheers are all drawn. And then something occurs to her.
“Has somebody been here?” she says, and turns to see—or thinks she sees—a funny expression cross Veronica’s face.
“Dr. Gooch came to check on me,” she says, and resumes rubbing ointment onto her stump. “He thinks my case is remarkable, how I’ve coped with my personal tragedy, how quickly I’ve adapted. He’s thinking of writing a paper about me.” An odd look of pride takes hold of her face and she stops applying the ointment. “Dr. Gooch calls my resilience exceptional.”
Lana bets Dr. Gooch thinks the boobs busting out of Veronica’s nightgown are pretty exceptional, too. She turns to go, can’t wait to get out of here. “Anything else?” she says.
“Yes. A small plate of melba toast, celery stalks, and green olives and a medium glass of grape juice. Two ice cubes.”
Lana gives Veronica her most sullen stare. “Any particular shape of ice cube?”
Veronica throws her head back and lets out a gay laugh. “I don’t have many blessings to count,” she says, “but it is nice that the upstairs maid has such a rich sense of humor. I thank you for that.”
F. U., Lana thinks. “You’re welcome,” she says, and on her way out kicks the door closed behind her.
39.
Dusk is the time of day Lana feels least at home. It’s something about the sunlight, the way it changes colors on the walls. It always makes her feel she’s looking for something she only has a few more minutes to find.