Catch & Release

by Blythe Woolston

  “What will it be, Polly? Polka or waltz.”

  “I can polka.” I don’t say that I doubt he can.

  Odd says nothing. Then he lifts the gun and points. Not at me. Not this time. He points to my left and a little high. KRAAAK!

  There isn’t even much of an echo.

  “Missed,” says Odd.

  Missed what? I have no fucking idea what might have been worth obliterating. None at all.

  Odd’s crazy, and he has a gun.

  Once a gun is in the game, everything changes.

  He walks behind me down the trail, down the hill. I could run, probably, but I can’t run faster than a bullet.

  I can feel him at my back like a weight, like a mountain lion a deer never sees until it drops and reaches around to choke out the air and ride out the puny struggle. I can hear his steps, the little difference between the true foot and the fake one. I feel the pine needles and little rocks underfoot and I wish he would slip. I’m listening for that moment—the moment when he slides a little and he has to catch himself. That is the moment when I will run.

  But we get to the car, and I’m still waiting for that moment. I open the door and get in. I stare straight ahead. I can hear Odd open the door. I hear the locks click shut. My hand is still on the handle, but I don’t know if the automatic lock will keep it shut if I try to get out.

  “Put your seat belt on,” says Odd. Then he turns the key.

  We pull off the main road onto a track between the trees. Maybe somebody pulled some logs out of here with a skidder. Maybe somebody used this place for a kegger. Whatever. The Cadillac drags itself along, its elegant belly in the dirt, thumping on rocks or roots.

  When Odd lets the car stop, we aren’t far off the road, but we are invisible. Not that there is any traffic to see us in the first place.

  “Here we go,” says Odd, “Perfect.”

  Perfect for what?

  Perfect for crazy.

  You build the fire this time, Polly,” says Odd. Then he sits down on a deadfall log and takes off his leg. He looks tired. Tired and crazy.

  I start scraping off a bare place to build a fire.

  “There’s no water here, Odd. What if the fire gets away from us?”

  “It ain’t gonna get away if you pay attention. Just do it right, Polly. The fire won’t get away.”

  I imagine my bones, some of my bones, left behind after the fire. I imagine somebody poking at my falling-apart ribs and finding the melted slug that ripped through my heart. I imagine the back of Odd’s skull all blown out from where he put the gun in his mouth. And there in the imaginary ashes is the gun—and the robot leg. And that’s all that’s left.

  “Ass in gear, Polly. We need that fire.”

  The air around me is still and hot. The sun won’t be gone for an hour. I start picking up branches that shattered off the deadfall.

  It’s just like T-ball. Everyone can play. Even I can play. Odd’s head is the ball. The bat? The bat?

  These pine branches are great firewood, tinder-dry and brittle, even the big ones. There is no strength left in them. They are that dead. They are no use to me.

  The bat . . . is his robot leg. I don’t need to hit a homer. Just try, Polly. Just hit the ball and run.

  I move as fast as I can. It’s not as heavy as I hoped but there’s nothing else right now. Grip and swing. It’s good enough. It’s a good enough hit. I just let go and the robot leg flies off into the bushes. Be careful with the bat Polly, you might hit someone if you just let it go. I did. I did hit someone. That was the plan. Now run, Polly, run, run.

  But I trip and fall hard on my stomach in the dirt.

  No I didn’t trip.

  It’s Odd. He’s got my ankle, my leg; he’s crawling up my body.

  I hit him hard but not hard enough.

  I scratch for something to fight with. Pine needles, dirt . . . nothing, nothing. I twist over so I can fight back. Now he has a hand over my mouth and both of my wrists tight in the other. So I pull my knee up hard. It doesn’t put an end to anything, but his hand slips a little and I buck my forehead into his face.

  Scrambling knees, hands, on my feet, by the car.

  The door is locked. Back door locked. Other side locked. Locked.

  Then I hear Odd. He’s sitting with his leg and his stump splayed out in front of him toddler-fashion. He has the keys and he’s shaking them over his head. He’s laughing. It’s not an evil laugh. It’s just a gut-busting, funniest-thing-in-the-world laugh. He puts his hand up to his nose and wipes at the blood.

  “Shit,” he says, “Shit. Suck me sideways, Pollywog.”

  OK. So that happened.

  I’m leaning against D’Elegance and I’m breathing ragged, but I can feel the adrenaline dropping . . . dropping. I rest my head on the car. I just don’t have the energy to do anything else.

  “So,” says Odd, “Let’s heat up them beans and eat nachos.” He wings the keys at me.

  I grope at space and I miss them. “Dumbass!” I yell, after I hear the keys land. Somewhere there, in the pine needles and the dust, are the keys. And until I find them we can’t open the trunk and pull out the can of refrieds and the bag of chips.

  Until I find the fucking keys, we go hungry.

  “You are such a dick.”

  “Bitch,” says Odd, in a cheerful sort of way, and he crawls back onto the log by the fire. “And get my leg out the brush when you got a chance.”

  “You should probably carry this,” Odd says, handing me the gun. “Things can happen to girls. You might need it.”

  “Need it for what?”

  “Bears, rapers, serial killers, drunk squirrels that want to make a nest on your head . . .”

  I reach out and take it, not because I’m afraid of bears or serial killers. I take it because Odd shouldn’t have it. It’s top-heavy in my hand. The weight is in the barrel, not in the plastic grip and clip hiding inside. I pop the clip. I check the chamber. Unloading a gun is a thing my dad thought a girl should be able to do. He taught me to do that before he taught me how to aim.

  “It isn’t going to be much use if it isn’t loaded,” says Odd.

  That’s the point, I think, but I don’t say it.

  “Maybe when you get home, you and your mom can have a shoot-out. I bet that woman can fire a rifle from the hip.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your mom. She’s fierce. And she’s still pretty hot. I’d hit that.”

  “Stop! Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup!”

  “I didn’t say I was gonna try. Just that, you know . . .”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. People don’t talk like that about moms.”

  “I’m sorry Polly. I just meant nobody should be able to make you do nothing you don’t want to. Not even your mom.”

  “To Gramma Dot and Meriwether Lewis,” says Odd.

  “To your Grandma Dot and Meriwether Lewis,” I say. When I hand the red aluminum flask back to Odd, I ask, “Why only Lewis? Why not Clark too?”

  “Because Lewis kept his shit together for the whole trip, and then he blew his brains out. He probably wanted to do it the whole time, but he didn’t. Gotta respect that.”

  It isn’t nice to ask, So how do you feel about your suicidal mom, then? but I think it. And Odd must know what I’m thinking, because he answers.

  “She had the post-parting depression, my mom.”

  “Post-partum?”

  “Yeah, that. Buck says she was going to kill me first because I gave it to her. He says that was the plan.”

  “That’s not the way post-partum depression works, Odd. You know that? Buck got it wrong. He was just a kid when it happened. He was probably scared and confused.”

  “He mighta been, back then—but not when he said it. He was in high school. He was an adult. I was six. It was right after everybody decided that mom was better and it was time for me to be part of the family again. I was crying because I didn’t want to stop living
with Gramma Dot. That’s when he told me I was only alive on accident.”

  Odd gives a twitchy shrug and takes another pull off the flask. “To Meriwether Lewis,” he says, then he hands the flask to me. I take a drink, but I don’t say anything.

  I make sure Odd gets drunker than I do, and then, when he lurches off to pee, I pull my wadded up, bloody socks out of the pocket of my shorts. I shove the gun into one sock and the ammunition in another. Then I shake out my sleeping bag and drop the whole mess in there. There might be better hiding places, but it’s good for now.

  I’m ready for sleep before Odd is done drinking and poking at the fire with a stick. So I get my sleeping bag and go to D’Elegance. “Welcome home,” says D’Elegance, “You can make a little nest on the lap of my back seat. You can pet my velvety cushions. Welcome home.”

  Welcome home.

  The thing about home is that it ought to be a place you remember, but I never saw this room before. My mom was busy here while I was making great strides to recovery in the hospital. My mess, my stuff, is all gone. She painted everything she couldn’t replace and replaced everything she couldn’t paint. I mean everything. The light switch is new.

  It’s very clean and serene. Pale lemon, pale honeysuckle, pale pale.

  All the stuff I had taped to the walls is gone. It was mostly things the kids at Kid-O-Korral gave me. Blue-painted macaroni whale? Gone. Smeary finger-paint pumpkin? Gone. It wasn’t like I was attached to that stuff. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Throwing it away didn’t feel right. Those things were gifts. At least the little kids thought they were gifts. So I taped them up on my walls. And the valentine heart Bridger made me last year out of a Wendy’s receipt when he remembered he’d forgotten it was Valentine’s Day? “True LOVE forever”? That’s gone too.

  The mix of makeup and pens and hair ties on my dresser is gone. Actually, my dresser, the one I had since I was eight, is gone. This one is new. The drawers are bigger, but I don’t know what’s in them. Maybe my clothes, but maybe not. How far did she go cleaning house? Far enough to find the Altoid tin with condoms in it?

  She is determined that the MRSA isn’t ever going to get me again. Thing is, I’ve got it. I will always have the MRSA. It is too late for hand sanitizer. It is too late to kill 99.99 percent of germs.

  “Mom. It’s beautiful. Thank you.” We hug. “But I’m tired. Can I just rest for a while?”

  “Oh, baby, sure baby. Do you want me to help you change into some PJs?”

  “I just want to lie down.”

  “OK, baby, OK.”

  I curl up on my new bed and stare at the wall. I stare at the new art that’s there to replace the macaroni whale and true love forever.

  I guess it’s very serene and spa-like, that art. It’s a study in soft folds and muted pastels.

  Oh, shit, it’s my Blankie. Mom found my Blankie— and she framed it.

  My Blankie. I learned to call it my “transitory comfort object” in psychology class. I learned that the little guys at the Kid-O-Korral needed to get weaned away from the ragged blankets, the stuffed bears, the things they liked to touch, to suck, to smell. “Your cozy will be safe in the cubby. You’re a big girl now.” It was a step toward healthy independence. The whole time I was doing that to the little kids, Blankie was in my pillowcase on my bed at home.

  And now Blankie is on display in a shadowbox frame, draped carefully to hide the corner I sucked until it was nothing but a raggedy fringe. Poor Blankie, pinned up in there like a big flannel moth. Poor me, if I need some transitory comfort.

  In case of emergency, break glass.

  Breakfast is graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate. S’mores are too much trouble.

  “Do you control your impulses, Polly?”

  “What? What impulses?”

  “Impulses. All of them. Pick an impulse. Do you like, use the three-question technique or something?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “The three-question technique. One: if I do or say this, how will it work out for me? Two: if I do or say this how will it work out for others? Three: if I do or say this, will I be following the rules? Those are the questions. They are supposed to lead to better decisions. So I wonder, Polly, is that how you decide what to do?”

  “I do what’s right, Odd, if that’s what you mean. I know the difference between right and wrong, and I do what’s right.”

  “Well, I was just asking, because it seems to me that you make some pretty strange choices in the impulse-control department,” says Odd, and he touches the place where I clobbered him with his leg. “Maybe you could use the three-question technique, too. Just sayin’.”

  “And be more like you? That’s great.”

  “Yeah. It is,” says Odd. He is smiling, and the morning light melts all over him like butter.

  “We got a choice this morning, Polly. We can go home, or we can go to Portland and tear Bridger a new one. I’m thinking Portland.”

  “What do you have against Bridger?” I ask.

  “Me? Nothing personal. But you’re my friend, Polly, and he treated you like shit.”

  I don’t know if I’d call Odd my friend, but Bridger did treat me like shit.

  “Portland,” I say. Easy as that, I’ve got a new plan. I’m going to Portland and tear Bridger Morgan a new one, that crap hound.

  “If you look to your right at the crest of the mountains you will see Our Lady of the Rockies right up there,” says Odd. He sounds like a narrator on the History Channel or a teacher winding up to talk about a personal obsession.

  It isn’t obvious what I’m supposed to see. The naked rocks gouge out through the trees . . . and there might be something up there. The color is different.

  “She’s taller than the Statue of Liberty,” says Odd.

  I’ve never seen the Statue of Liberty for real. It gives the impression of bigness in pictures, but from here this giant lady looks like a large grain of rice.

  “Butte,” says Odd, continuing his voice-over, “The Mining City. A mile high and a mile deep and all on the level. The richest hill on earth.”

  “A mile high and a mile deep—all on the level? What does that even mean?” I don’t expect an answer. Little kids do it all the time. They just repeat stuff they think they hear. Odd’s just like a little girl in the dress-up corner of the Kid-O-Korral singing into a hairbrush microphone, “There’s a pair of flying eyes and a set of bees.”

  “Almost a mile above sea level, that’s your mile high. The copper mines went down almost a mile deep into the mountain. And ‘level’—that’s a word play. There was levels in the mines, but it’s also saying you can trust Butte. What you see is what you get,” says Odd.

  We are surrounded by abandoned buildings, places for rent, mansions turned into bed-and-breakfasts, and rickety-looking black towers growing into the sky from weedy empty places.

  “Why do you know so much about Butte?” I ask.

  “Don’t we all? Didn’t you take Montana History?”

  “No, Odd. I took AP History. Butte didn’t come up much.”

  “So you didn’t get to go on the field trip?”

  “No field trip to Butte.”

  “Sucks to be you. The field trip was great. Saw the underground speakeasies, the brothels, Evel Knievel’s jail cell. We went to Helena too. I met the governor’s dog.”

  “Didn’t do that either. Never met the governor’s dog. But I’m pretty sure that isn’t on the AP test.”

  “The stuff on the test is boring. The governor’s dog is cool. And if you’re friends with a guy’s dog, you are friends with the guy.”

  “Is the governor friends with Penny?”

  “Who?”

  “Your dog, Penny. Is she, like, a political dog.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right. The Dog. Penny. She isn’t, like, really my dog.”

  “Whose dog is she?”

  “I just got her out of the pound the day we left.”


  “You adopted a dog and then dumped it the same day?”

  “Well, it’s not like I shaved it and spray-painted it blue and threw it in a Dumpster. It’s with your mom. It’s fine.”

  “My mom doesn’t even like dogs.”

  “Huh. Everybody likes dogs. She can always take it to the pound.”

  “She isn’t going to take it to the pound because she thinks it is your dog.”

  “Alrighty then. I’ll have to get that cleared up when we get back.”

  Butte. Welcome to Butte. It’s not like Butte doesn’t make an effort to be good and pretty and sweet. There are flower beds shaped like Celtic knots. If the petunias are getting beat flat at the moment by the wind blowing grit around in the parking lot, that’s not Butte’s fault. She is totally doing her best. Look, petunias! But we didn’t come here to see petunias. We came to see Butte’s most remarkable feature, a monstrous, oozing gouge in the dirt. We came here to see the World Famous Berkeley Pit.

  Welcome to Berkeley Pit. It’s not just an environmental disaster zone; it’s a tourist trap.

  The gusts of wind in the parking lot are almost stronger than my legs. I am one delicate, ugly flower. I’m glad to duck into the tunnel that leads to the world-famous hole in the ground, but the wind is even stronger inside. The tunnel must focus it like a funnel. The walls are yellow; at least they look yellow in the fluorescent light.

  “This would make a great bomb shelter,” says Odd.

  Odd is wrong, again. And this time he is so obviously wrong I think it’s not even worth mentioning. There are no doors on this tunnel, and the nearest water is poison even without radioactive fallout.

  Odd spins around and faces me, “Ka-Chakk.” He loads an invisible shotgun. “Ka-Bloo!”