by Jon Jacks
Phoebe says she’ll runaway with him, but then the guy chickens out. He goes to see his folks instead.
They have him put away, I reckon, figuring out he’s a few cents short of a dollar.
I put the book down, smile at Brad like, Hey, what a great book! I’ve really enjoyed wasting my time reading that!
Later, when he appears satisfied no one is coming after us, Brad lets me switch on the TV.
Top Cat. Yeah, I get it; Bilko, but without the costs and tantrums you get with real actors.
Same with that other cartoon, The Flintstones – the Honeymooners, only without Jackie Gleason.
‘Did you kill anyone?’
I ask as Officer Dibble chases two wise guys dressed in Mafia style suits. Like my Mom, I keep my eyes fixed on the TV.
Like I don’t really care what the answer to my question will be.
He’s peering out of the window, the pistol back in his shoulder holster.
‘We’ll move out of here as soon as it starts getting dark,’ he says, avoiding answering my question.
‘Why’d we come here anyway, if we’re being chased?’
I try a different tack, wondering if I can get him to ever open up to me. He knows more than he’s telling, that’s all I know.
‘I thought it might draw them out. Thought they’d be fooled into thinking our guard was down.’
‘I was bait, you mean?’
Dibble’s ended up in a trashcan.
‘I was the bait. You were the target. They’d be after you no matter what kid.’
‘You reckon they’re still after us?’
I move over to the window, look out across the parking lot and fields. Wondering what it is he’s looking for.
There’s just the regular movement you’d expect out on the road. Cars and trucks shimmering in the heat like they’re gonna disappear before our eyes.
Down in the parking lot, a family’s lazily unloading their dusty Plymouth. The mother’s getting pissed with one of her pig-tailed daughters for dragging a suitcase.
‘Sure they’re still after us.’
He looks over at the family, like he’s expecting them to start blasting us at any moment with hidden machine guns and bazookas.
‘They’ll be after us until they know for sure you ain’t gonna go blabbing to the press or police.’
*
Chapter 22
As evening sets in, we’re on the road again.
I’ve eaten the last of the food we’d had brought in from the diner. It was even worse cold, the grease having set around it like a grey jelly.
‘How’s the reading coming on.’
It’s the closest thing to conversation Brad’s made all day. I shrug.
He observes my shrug like he’s offended.
‘Wise up kid,’ he growls. ‘You telling me you been reading all day and ain’t got to the bit about the kid singing the poem you were asking about?’
I look at him, thinking.
‘Yeah,’ I say after a pause. ‘Make’s more sense in the book though; “See a body, catch a body, coming through the rye.”’
He looks away from the road, gives me an admiring glance.
‘Good memory kid.’
‘But I don’t get how that makes this Holden guy dream he’s the catcher, stopping children from falling off a cliff. All this Catcher in the Rye stuff had me thinking of some sort of evil guy, catching kids in the fields and roasting them alive or something like that.’
‘Yeah, but look at me kid – despite my better judgement, I’m rescuing you, right?’
‘I’m not falling off a cliff.’
‘Depends what sort of cliff you’re thinking of kid. You can fall off the cliff of your entire life – and that’s you sure enough.’
‘That bad, huh?’
I look at him like he’s just told me I ain’t having chopped nuts on my ice cream.
‘That bad,’ he grunts, his eyes back on the road.
‘Strikes me that kid don’t ever really wanna grow up, don’t want anyone to grow up.’
Brad grins.
‘I thought you were smarter than you made out kid. Insightful, that’s what I’d call insightful. But ain’t you the opposite, ain’t that why you’ve spotted it? Trying to grow up too fast?’
‘I ain’t falling, if that’s what you’re meaning,’ I say, full of bravado once again.
‘You ain’t falling, how come I ain’t seen you crying over your mom kid? That ain’t natural, you ask me. I’ve seen grown men out in the jungle cry for their mom.’
I give him the shrug again, turning away before he can see that my eyes are glazing over.
Damn, why do they do that?
‘You ain’t fooling me kid. You’re just trying to look like you don’t care. Fighting it, letting it all build up inside you where one day it’ll tear you apart.’
Another shrug, like I’m the big man.
Fact is, I’ve cried my heart out, getting the shakes, back in the house. Like a girl.
Not that he needs to know.
Sure, he’s coming out all understanding now, but I know his type; moment you show a hint of weakness, they see themselves as your master.
It’s not something I want to dwell on, those moments of weakness.
Natch, Mom wasn’t the perfect mom, like you see in all those ads; baking cakes, cleaning the house, looking beautiful even as she comes back from making sure the drains are clear. Smiling at everything like she’s overdosing on toothpaste.
Even Mr Magoo could see it wasn’t a great relationship we had there.
Sticking together because we thought we had to, that’s what we were doing. Because that’s what a mom and her son are supposed to do.
More through need rather than love.
But she’d had it hard, I realise that; it ain’t her fault she’d been dealt a hand any broad in their right mind would’ve stacked before the game even got under way.
Can’t hate her for that, can I?
Strange thing is, it does hurt when I think she ain’t no longer around.
Strange to think she ain’t gonna be there, eyes glued to that square little box, living her life in there rather than with me.
It ain’t nice to think about her that way neither
‘My advice; let it out now kid. Then get over it.’
‘I’m over it,’ I say.
He laughs. A tough guy laugh, like you get from Robert Mitchum in that Night of the whatchamacallit movie.
‘You thinking I ain’t noticed you took the loss of you’re beloved Marilyn harder than you did the death of your own mom? Bet you cried over her, eh? How guilty you gonna feel, kid, when you look back one day and think on how you didn’t cry for the woman as raised you, and fed you?’
He looks at me hard, like he’s trying to detect any tears forming in my eyes.
He ain’t gonna see any.
‘Thing is, you know why that is kid? Why you feel more for Marilyn’s loss than your own?’
‘I take it you’re gonna tell me whether I wanna know or not.’
‘It’s all down to the fact she was just an innocent like you kid.’
‘I’m no innocent.’
The stupid bravado once again.
Met by the tough guy laugh once again.
‘Marilyn was caught up in this great big nasty world just like you kid; seeing everything through those great big innocent eyes of hers, she couldn’t help but be finally broken. That old guy, messing with her like that?’
I get the look again, the look that says he’s pushing for a reaction.
‘So you know about that.’
I say it as nonchalantly as I can, even though I feel he’s messing with her every much as that old guy.
‘It’s all in the papers kid. There ain’t a time she’s gone for a piss in the park that the papers don’t wanna know about now she’s gone and died. There’s not mu
ch every Jack in the street ain’t knowing about her now.’
‘Except the way she died. No one’s figured that out yet.’
‘She died, kid, because no one caught her. There was no Catcher in the Rye. No one to save her when she was just an innocent child.’
*
Chapter 23
I think Brad’s flipped when he heads out into the desert.
We’ve got nothing left in the sedan to eat and drink. He even refuses to buy anything when we stop for gas.
It’s after stopping there that he turns off into the desert. If I’d’ve known, I’d’ve lifted enough food to see us safely through the hellhole we’re heading into.
Sure, we pass the odd lonely homestead; but that’s exactly what we do, pass them by without Brad even giving them a glance. Let alone head towards them with the intention of begging for food and water.
‘So we’re gonna die out here, huh?’
‘We’re all gonna die at some point kid. The trick is to keep putting it off.’
‘You know we ain’t got enough water to see us safely through all this’
‘Sure I know kid; thing is, those following us’ll know it too if they’re doing their job right and making all the right checks. They’d know too that we’d be crazy to head on out here without water.’
‘Crazy, huh?’
‘They’ll figure it out eventually, sure; but if they’re low enough down the food chain, they ain’t gonna have any idea where we’re heading. Meaning they’ll waste even more time checking out all these here Bonanza boys to see where we got fresh supplies.’
‘And if they do know where we’re heading?’
He gives me a sly glance.
‘In that case, kid, we’ve got far bigger problems to worry about than dying of thirst in the desert.’
*
Chapter 24
If I’d thought Brad had lost it when he’d headed off into the desert, I know it for sure when he turns off the road and starts heading across a track marked by nothing more than other tyre prints.
There’s nothing ahead of us but land you couldn’t grow a weed in.
After a while, I spot a dust cloud on the horizon, like there’s a storm brewing. And that’s where Brad’s heading.
As we draw closer, I begin to make out a tall wire fence. It stretches off to completely encircle the area where the cloud hovers and swirls.
A guardhouse and a striped barrier lies directly ahead of us, a couple of soldiers stepping forward. One raises a hand, a command that we should halt.
Brad drops his window, shows his ID. Says, ‘I’ll vouch for the kid,’ the soldier bending down and peering at me suspiciously.
The barrier’s lifted and we’re waved through.
As we drive on, I begin to realise it’s just a huge building site.
Unbelievably massive bulldozers and diggers burrowing vast holes in the ground. Towering cranes lowering tubular concrete sections like their creating a vertical, upended subway.
Trucks are everywhere, throwing up almost as much dust as they’re carrying away on their backs.
‘Welcome to the brave new world kid. The new frontier. Crops like this are going up all over the US. And Russky land too. A crop no sensible person would ever wanna see being harvested.’
I give him my best blank look.
‘Missiles kid; silos for missiles, not grain. Someday soon people won’t be allowed anywhere near this place, not even people like me.’
‘So we hide out here? The guy’s following won’t be allowed in?’
‘As I said kid, depends on what size fish they are; little fish or big fish. Just to be on the safe side, we’ll just be taking on rations and be on our way.’
We drive past row after row of trailers, like there’s a small city here of people from the wrong side of the tracks. But it’s construction workers you see everywhere, thousands of them, milling around like termites building the biggest nest in the world.
Thousands of workers means hundreds of places to eat and Brad stops off at one of these joints. A pasty looking guy comes back out with him, struggling with a box full of food he loads into the car’s trunk.
Pasty goes back for some canisters of water as Brad hands me three opened cokes, a couple of warm hamburgers.
I’m still drinking and eating as we speed back along the dusty track, heading away from the destruction site.
*
Another house, another home.
This time in New Orleans.
We didn’t stop over anywhere; just bedded down in the car, huddling under blankets Brad had stored in the trunk like he was used to this sort of thing.
The new house is in the old quarter of New Orleans, so ‘new’ in that sense it definitely ain’t.
You get the feeling you’ve stepped back a century or so, everywhere smelling of hot horsesh– and vomited whiskey. A sharp, sour reek you can taste on your tongue.
Thankfully, there’s none of the instructions I had to live by in the previous ‘safe’ house. Here I can go out when I choose. Throw the drapes open.
But nothing ‘that’ll draw attention to you, natch.’
A party with all my friends is definitely out then, huh?
No school though; that’s a bonus. I can just laze around all day, waiting for my man with his deliveries of food, glib comments, and his opinions on all manner of things.
‘Mark my words kid; there’s an obvious connection between all them there nuke bombs the Ruskies are letting off and the way they’re just throwing commies up into space in rocket fuelled tins.’
‘Well, what did he expect, eh kid?’ (On Martin Luther King being jailed.)
‘Three thousand men, just to get a few blacks learning how to read and write?’ (On JFK sending troops into the University of Mississippi.)
Thankfully, I have a TV.
Sh–, I think; it ain’t all deeply ingrained in my genes, is it?
*
Still, time passes quick when you’re just letting yourself wallow in whatever’s thrown your way by the little grey screen.
Before I know it, we’re into October. I find myself wondering how much Mom would’ve loved a couple of new programmes.
I can see her here now, gently wetting herself at The Lucy Show.
She’d’ve called me over, saying ‘just listen to this’, getting me to sit there and listen to every word Joan Crawford was coming out with as she revealed all to this guy Johnny Carson.
Dennis the Menace is back too. I’m watching it when Brad comes by, letting himself in as usual and frowning as he catches me slumped in front of the square box.
I shrug. Mr Wilson is up on a charge. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s ‘Children's Day in Court’. Meaning children get to run the court, and Dennis is the judge.
Brad switches it off.
‘Hey, I was watching that!’ I hear myself saying in my head.
I hold it back from coming out of my mouth. He looks pissed.
‘The Ruskies are setting out their missiles in Cuba, kid. And you’re laid out here like it’s the last days of Rome.’
I shrug; hey, I don’t know anything about Ruskie missiles in Cuba. It ain’t as if it’s been on the TV or anything.
‘So what? We’ve got our own missiles,’ I say.
‘Yeah kid, but these Ruskie missiles are so close they could aim for your butt and put one right down your rear passage.’
‘Yeah, but they ain’t gonna actually be aiming there are they, eh?’
‘They would if I had control of the buttons kid. Just to get some form of life back into that wasting bag of bones you still call a body.’
He grabs me by the shirt collar, hauls me up close to
his face.
‘Besides, I have some news that’ll really interest you.’
He lets me down again, like this was all just to show who’s in control here.
‘There’s one thing that’s still been puzzling me about our Miss Monroe’s “suicide” kid.’
He’s already pulled out an envelope from the bag of groceries he’s brought.
He pulls out two photographs from the envelope, handing them to me. They’re almost identical pictures, only the angle of the camera’s slightly different.
They’re pictures of the clutter in Marilyn’s room the day she died.
Brad points out something to me, indicating the same spot on both photographs.
‘See, there was no glass kid – and then, later, as if by magic, there was a glass.’
*
Chapter 25
‘How’d she swallow enough drugs to kill her if she ain’t using champagne to swill it down with?’
‘Champagne?’ Brad looks puzzled.
‘She’d take her pills with champagne,’ I explain.
‘Well that ain’t no champagne glass. And how come it ain’t there at first and then, hey presto, there it is! Someone’s put it there kid. Someone who wants us to think it’s suicide.’
I look up at him.
‘This mean’s you’re beginning to believe me when I say agents were there that night?’
‘This means I’m beginning to wonder what out three stooges aren’t telling us. See, I check up on what our Sergeant Clemmons – the cop called out to the scene – says about it all. He says he’s seen plenty of suicides in his time, and the way our Miss Monroe’s laid out ain’t looking like suicide to him.’
‘How? What’d he mean by that?’
Heck, I knew it wasn’t a suicide, but here we’ve got a cop saying the same thing. And no one’s reported it. No one’s listened to him.
‘Thing is, anyone overdosing goes into convulsions, kid. Vomiting too. They end up in one heck of mess, contorted like you ain’t ever wanting to see. Marilyn was laid face down, her legs stretched out – like, he says, she’d been placed that way.’
‘Could be Eunice – tidying up, like she did with the washing.’
I say it, but I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.
He gives me a ‘you don’t believe that do you?’ look.
‘Now I’m more curious than ever, right? See, another strange thing about all this is the autopsy results. They ain’t made public, and there ain’t no record of the findings. I checked. Lucky for us we took copies of those results before they were “lost”, eh kid?’
He pulls out another set of large photographs from the envelope.