Rose & Poe

by Jack Todd

  The gap in her memory is still there and it is maddening. If only she could remember what happened to her, she could clear this up in minutes, she could exonerate Poe, free him from that jail. But no matter how many times she goes over it, she can’t get past the point where she took the brownies out to Poe.

  Miranda is mildly curious about Sebastian, who hasn’t written or called or gotten in touch with her in any way. It is not like him — he has always been so clingy. She finally writes to tell him that it is definitely over. She won’t be returning to Cambridge, so it would be pointless to try to go on. When Sebastian doesn’t reply to the letter either, Miranda shrugs. She had braced herself for a long campaign to win her back, weepy letters about his infernal need. Under the circumstances, silence is golden.

  Miranda is more frustrated by Airmail’s absence. She wonders if what he told her father might have some bearing on what happened to her, if he might be able to jog her memory, but the man with the cobalt eyes has vanished. When she tries the number herself, she learns that the phone has been disconnected. She jumps into her VW and drives into Belle Coeur. The door of the store-front office on Main Street where Airmail had worked has been left ajar. She pushes it open and finds nothing but an old desk, a worn desk chair, and a lot of dust, as though the place hasn’t been occupied for years. There is a square imprint on the desk where there was a phone, but the phone is gone and there isn’t so much as a scrap of paper to indicate where Airmail might have gone. She walks up and down the street, talking to the proprietors of neighboring stores. It doesn’t seem possible that a man who is four feet tall and rides a Kawasaki Ninja at the speed of sound could disappear without anyone noticing, but she can’t find a solitary person who can recall the last time Airmail was seen around town.

  After two hours spent combing both sides of Main Street, Miranda sits on a park bench and weeps. It feels as though her last chance to understand what happened to her has disappeared, along with the strange little sprite who so annoyed her father.

  ~

  The New World Hotel

  With the trial set to start nine days before Christmas, the presiding judge knows it’s likely to spill over into the holidays, so he postpones it until the fourth of January. The postponement makes sense, but it leaves Rose feeling as blue as she has ever been. She had counted on having Poe home for Christmas.

  Rose mopes for a couple of days, snapping at Joey Ballew for his habit of following her around and asking if she’s okay, but it’s not like her to lollygag. She is tossing and turning at three o’clock in the morning, annoyed at Joey for taking up a third of the bed where she is accustomed to sleeping alone, when she hits on the one useful thing she might do. She leaves Joey the entire bed, brews a pot of coffee, and waits impatiently until the first pale wash of winter sunlight strikes the kitchen window. Then she picks up the telephone and dials Maeva Miller.

  A recorded message tells her that Maeva’s line has been disconnected, but Rose is undeterred. She drags Joey out of bed to help her milk the goats and do the chores, then waits while he dawdles with his oatmeal. She is sitting in the pickup when he finally ambles out, still tucking in his shirt.

  What had been the Kids Kamp looks more run-down and dismal than ever, without Alf around to do even minimal maintenance. There’s no answer when Rose rings the doorbell, but the door is unlocked. Rose opens it to find Maeva drinking coffee and smoking while she watches a daytime talk show on TV with the volume up as high as it will go. Two sisters are screaming obscenities at one another because they had both slept with the same man. Maeva watches as though hypnotized. Her long blond hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in a month, she’s wearing nothing but one of Alf’s old plaid shirts, and there are huge dark circles under her eyes. Rose tries to explain what she has in mind, but she can’t talk over the TV, so she reaches over and switches the power off. In the odd silence that follows, they can hear the old house creaking in the wind.

  Maeva blinks up at her as though she has never seen Rose before in her life. Rose figures that she has been into Alf’s drug stash and that she’s having a little trouble coping with the cold gray reality of a December morning. Rose edges her chair up close and forces the young woman to look at her.

  “Maeva, I have a little outing in mind. How’d you like to come to New York with me?”

  “New York? You mean, like, Plattsburgh?”

  “No. I mean New York City. I want to find those boys.”

  “What boys?”

  “Skeeter and Moe. The two you told me about? The ones who might’ve seen Poe out at the gravel pit the day the Thorne girl was attacked?”

  “Oh, them boys. I dunno, Rose. New York City is a big place. I’ve been there with Alf. It can scare the hell out of you.”

  “You’ll be safe with me. Folks never give me trouble. I called the station in Bunker’s Corner and there’s a Greyhound bus that leaves at ten. I’ll pay all our expenses; it won’t cost you a thin dime.”

  Maeva manages a half smile. It’s the first sign of life Rose has seen in the woman. “Where we gonna stay? A hotel?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. We’ll find a place, and I’ll feed you good. You could use a little meat on your bones. I swear you’ve lost ten pounds since the last time I seen you, and you was skinny then. You look like one of them bony little girl country singers. They don’t eat because they think they got to look like a fashion model, and they end up with voices as thin as a poor man’s soup.”

  Rose brews a pot of coffee. The milk in Maeva’s fridge has curdled and the sugar is full of ants, but she gets Maeva to drink two cups, then accompanies her into the bathroom. There’s no soap but there is an almost full bottle of baby shampoo and Rose uses the whole thing on Maeva’s hair and her pitiful frame, washing her the way you would wash a little girl. When she’s put on clean jeans and a sweater and Rose has brushed her hair, Maeva looks almost pretty again.

  Joey swings by the jail on the way to the bus station so Rose can tell Poe she will be gone for a while. She promises to be back before Christmas. Poe seems to be wasting away and Rose has the feeling that captivity is slowly killing him, despite the pies and cakes and pots of chili she carts to the jail.

  By the time they climb on the bus, the drugs have worn off and the coffee has kicked in and Maeva is downright chatty. Rose is enjoying herself, feeling like the girl’s mother, listening to her yack about what kind of lipstick she likes and how Alf always treated her bad but she’s going to miss that pack of kids that come up every summer for the camp.

  “I’d like to have a bunch of kids myself,” Maeva says.

  “So have them,” Rose advises. “Find yourself a man that isn’t Alf and have kids.”

  Maeva looks down, biting her lip. “Can’t. Alf took care of that.”

  Rose doesn’t pursue it. She remembers when Maeva was the prettiest girl in Belle Coeur County. Now she’s past twenty-five and looking ten years older than she is. She’s bird-boned and petite, with quick, shy gestures and a weary, wounded smile, but Rose is sure there’s nothing wrong with the girl that a little tender care wouldn’t fix. The first thing is to get her away from Alf for good, and the second is to get her off whatever drugs she’s doing. One thing at a time.

  Maeva dozes off with her head on Rose’s shoulder. Rose cools her cheek against the window on the west side of the bus, watching the light drain out of the day, the dregs of the sunset spilling like molten lava down the dark hills.

  It’s dark when they reach the Port Authority Bus Station at Eighth Avenue and Forty-Second Street. They shoulder their bags, say goodbye to the driver and thank him for a pleasant trip, and Maeva leads the way on foot to the YMCA at Sixty-Third and Broadway. Rose can’t stop gawking at the people, the traffic, the buildings that rise like steep cliffs on all sides. In every block, she stops three or four times to gaze up and up. Hurrying pedestrians bump into her, but Rose remains m
otionless until Maeva, who is shivering in the cold, yanks at her sleeve and says they have to be getting on. They take adjoining single rooms at the Y, both rooms smaller than most jail cells, and the only bathroom is down the hall. The rooms have been painted a shade of light purple, and Maeva says the color purple makes her sick. There’s a tiny closet without a hanger rack, and the bed is on wheels, with a mattress about as thick as two of Rose’s fingers held together, and every time she tries to turn over, it rolls away from the wall. The bed comes with a sheet, blanket, and one postage-stamp pillow, and the springs are so noisy and the walls so thin that when Maeva moves in the next room, she wakes Rose.

  After one sleepless night, Maeva figures she can do better on a double room in a hotel. She locates a phone booth downstairs with the yellow pages intact, borrows a handful of change from Rose, and calls hotels until she finds them a room at the New World Hotel on the Bowery in Chinatown, a block from the Grand Street subway station and not far from an address they have for Skeeter in Alphabet City. The room is noisy and cramped and there is a pervasive smell of General Tao’s chicken, but the beds are comfortable and they have their own bathroom. Rose sleeps like a baby. The police sirens, the car alarms, the maniacs screaming in the night don’t bother her half as much as the birds back home.

  Each time they registered at the camp, Skeeter and Moses gave a different address. Maeva also has various addresses for a dozen other boys from the area who were friendly with the pair and might know where to find them. They try all the addresses they have for Skeeter first, because they’re in the neighborhood. It’s frigid work. There’s no snow on the ground and the temperature is ten degrees warmer than back home, but the wind whips through the canyons between the tall buildings and bites through their clothes. Rose doesn’t complain, but Maeva has only a thin cloth coat and she shivers constantly. On the afternoon of the second day, they’re trudging along Canal Street when Rose spots a pink parka and buys it for Maeva, along with a fleecy jacket and an oversized pair of mittens. Maeva puts it on and smiles gratefully at Rose.

  The extra clothing fends off the cold, but Maeva is still frightened by the city. She carries a little spray can of Mace tucked in her hand most of the time, ready to zap anyone who looks at her the wrong way. Her eyes dart in every direction, watching for trouble, while Rose seems impervious to any threat. She strides through the crowds, saying hello to junkies, cops, wild-eyed streetwalkers, Wall Street brokers, subway token vendors, street magicians, cabbies, dog walkers, dope dealers, tourists from Indiana, and gangbangers with baseball caps turned sideways and pants riding around their knees. Even the gangbangers look her over and decide there’s no point messing with a crazy white woman who is big as a house.

  They have no luck finding Skeeter. The tenement address Maeva has for him in Alphabet City is gone, torn down to make room for a condo development. The elementary school that helped to place the boy with the Kids Kamp is still open, but it has been two years since Skeeter was registered there. Maeva and Rose give up on Skeeter and concentrate on locating Moses instead. That means taking the D train all the way to the Mott Haven neighborhood in the South Bronx. Neither woman has been on a subway before, but after taking the train the wrong direction all the way out to Coney Island, they figure it out. At the most recent address Maeva has for Moses, a sixth-floor apartment in a building that smells as though someone dumped a tub of boric acid down the stairwells, they pass a dead rat on the second-floor landing. Maeva wants to turn back, but Rose keeps trudging up the steps. They find a metal door with the number “609” spray-painted in fluorescent pink next to the doorknob. They can hear noises and a baby crying inside, but Rose has to pound on the door for five minutes before three or four locks snick open and a woman in her twenties peeks out between double chains.

  “What you want?”

  Maeva steps up to the crack so the woman can see her. “We’re looking for Moses P. Washington.”

  The woman opens the door another crack. Braced on her hip, she holds a snot-nosed toddler with a smelly diaper. “What’s he done this time? That boy ain’t nothin but trouble.”

  “He hasn’t done a thing. He might have seen a crime that was done last summer, that’s all. He was at the summer camp I used to run with my husband. My name’s Maeva.”

  The woman looks her up and down, like she’s deciding whether to cooperate. “I heard of you, Maeva. Moe says you were good to him, but he ain’t here anyhow.”

  “When do you think he might be back?”

  “Moe? Might as well wait on the wind. He might be comin up them stairs right now, or we might not see him for a week. You welcome to set out there and wait. You can’t come in, on account of my baby-father is sleepin one off.”

  Across the street, there’s a patch of what was meant to be green space, with a single park bench. The ground is littered with cigarette butts, used condoms, broken bottles, and syringes, but Rose and Maeva sit shivering in the cold, waiting to see if Moe is going to come home. They take turns warming up at a café up the street until early dark swallows the city. It’s near eight o’clock in the evening when they give up and walk back to the 149th Street subway station. Maeva thinks they might as well take a bus back to Belle Coeur County, but Rose is determined to come back the next morning and to keep coming back every day until Moe turns up.

  ~

  A crash like broken glass

  They find Moe on the third day. He’s coming back from the deli on the corner as they arrive in the morning, carrying a pack of cigarettes for his sister and milk for the baby. Maeva steps up to say hello.

  “Hey, Moe. How are you?”

  The boy eyes her warily, ready to run if that seems like the best option.

  “You aren’t in trouble if that’s what you’re thinking, Moe,” she says. “It’s me, Maeva. From the Kids Kamp?”

  “Maeva! I didn’t recognize you in all them clothes. Goodness, woman, what brings you all the way to New York City?”

  “Looking for you and Skeeter. Do you have a few minutes to talk to us?”

  He shrugs. “School’s out for Christmas. I got nothin but minutes.”

  “Come over here and shake hands, then. This here is Rose, Poe’s mama. Poe’s a big fella who lives up on Manitou Mountain, you might have heard of him?”

  Moe nods and says a polite hello to Rose. She shakes the boy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Moe. Listen, there’s a café in the next block where we can get some breakfast. We’ll buy you something to eat and we can talk where it’s warm.”

  The boy lights up when she mentions food. “First off, I got to run this stuff upstairs. That baby is screamin its head off and my sister is about to have a nicotine fit. But I’ll be right back down. Don’t you leave without me.”

  Moses is gone so long that Maeva begins to think he’s skipped out on them, but he comes whistling back out and leads the way to the restaurant, where they find a booth and Moe orders pancakes and bacon and a big glass of orange juice. Rose and Maeva settle for coffee and toast and when the coffee arrives, Maeva puts her hand on the boy’s bony shoulder and looks him in the eye.

  “Listen, Moses. This is real important. We thought you and Skeeter might’ve seen something that happened last summer, out by that old gravel pit. Poe is in a whole lot of trouble, and we hoped maybe you saw it and you might be able to help.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I remember the way you boys looked when you came back that day. You came running into the yard like you were scared something awful. I thought it was only the lightning had you spooked, but you said you and Skeeter had been out by the gravel pit. When I heard they arrested Poe, I put two and two together.”

  “We like old Poe, me and Skeeter. For a while last summer we was tracking him most every day, only we didn’t know it was him. At first we thought he was the Sasquatch or Bigfoot or one of them, cause we found these big tracks left by a beast t
hat had six toes on each foot.”

  “So you were trailing him that day at the gravel pit?”

  “We was, only we got there late. That was the day we figured out Poe and the Sasquatch was the same person. We followed his tracks out from town. Then we lost them for a while, maybe because he got a ride or somethin. We had to look around for two hours before we picked up the trail again. We followed them tracks along a road to the gravel pit, and we was still a couple of hundred feet away when we heard a lady screaming.”

  “Did you see what was going on?”

  “Not really. We got up as close as we could, but we was hiding behind these big tall sunflowers because we was real scared. We heard this lady, sounded like somebody was killing her. We thought she was bein attacked by a Sasquatch. Then we heard a man talkin to her, kind of quiet, and she was tellin him to stop. Then you could hear he was hittin her. I knew for sure what it was because I heard that sound before, plenty. She was yellin for him to stop, only he wasn’t goin to quit until he killed her was what it sounded like.”

  “Was it Poe who was talking to her?”

  “I dunno what Poe sounds like. Well, we heard him sing a time or two, but we didn’t never hear him talk.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “After the lady was screaming?”

  “Yes.”

  “The man yell.”

  “What did he yell?”

  “I dunno. Somethin loud, like, What? Or maybe it was Huh? Then there was a big crash.”

  “What kind of crash?”

  “Like a car wreck, maybe? Like broke glass, that kind of crash.”