by Ania Ahlborn
“What happened?” Michael asked, eventually finding his voice again.
She shrugged her shoulders as if to say she didn’t want to talk about it, but explained it with a single word.
“Momma.”
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing.” She looked almost offended by the question. “When do I gotta do anythin’ to get her mad? She’s been in a mood, gettin’ impatient again.”
“But we just had a girl,” Michael said.
“And then Ray went and said somethin’ about Lauralynn. You know how she gets.”
It must have been about fifteen years earlier that Momma had shipped Lauralynn off to Grandma and Grandpa Westfall’s place out in North Carolina. One day Lauralynn was around, and the next day she was gone—poof, like magic, a disappearing act that only went one way. The grandparents had always scared him. Grandma Jean had the face of an old witch—the kind that lives in gingerbread houses and cooks children for supper. Grandpa Eugene carried a cane and whipped it across the small of people’s backs when they were too slow to get out of his way. Michael suspected that Momma had learned how to be cruel from her own parents. Maybe their meanness had been so severe that it had rubbed off on Claudine like a contagious disease.
“What’s this?” Misty Dawn leaned forward and snatched the record from beneath Michael’s arm. She peered at the cover, then gave her brother a curious glance. “Where’d you get it?”
“In town.”
“You had money?”
“I’m just borrowin’ it,” Michael said. “The girl that works at the store said it’s a loan.”
Misty’s expression flickered from inquisitive to suspicious. “A girl?” Her mouth quirked down at the corners. “What kind of girl?”
“Just a girl who works there.” He tried to sound indifferent, as though Alice couldn’t have caught his interest if she had pulled her shirt over her head and shimmied back and forth. Except if she had really done that, Michael would have dropped dead of a heart attack. If Alice had leaned in a little closer than she had while standing above those crates, he would have vomited his nerves all over the Dervish’s inventory.
“What kind of a girl lets you borrow a record for free?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you do—give her somethin’ in exchange?”
“No.” Michael forced a breathy, incredulous laugh from his throat, but it only made him sound guilty. “I didn’t even want it,” he told her, “but she said to take it anyway. It’s supposed to be rare or somethin’.”
He took a seat on the edge of Misty’s bed, but she popped off it as soon as he sank into the mattress, as if not wanting to be close to him just then. She approached the old RCA portable record player sitting on top of her dresser instead, then carefully removed the vinyl that had been left there. Sliding the new record that Michael had brought out of its sleeve, she dropped it onto the turntable, hit a button to start it spinning, and lowered the needle into place.
They listened to the track in silence, Misty standing motionless in the center of her room as if mesmerized by the spinning disc. Michael was fascinated by the weird, almost watery-sounding guitar and the strange, brooding vocals. The lyrics struck him as both haunting and alluring, as though the singer wasn’t only singing to him, but about him. By the time the song was over, Michael was in love.
Before he could ask Misty to replay it, she lifted the needle from the record and placed it back at the outer edge. Michael closed his eyes, allowing the moodiness of the music to sweep him away. By the time the second verse hit, Misty had her arms over her head, her hips swaying to the dark, sexy rhythm. She turned to him as she danced, giving him a look he had seen before, a look that always managed to set his teeth on edge. But Michael was too engrossed in the song himself. With his head lolling back and forth, his thoughts were ten miles away. He was back inside that brightly colored store, pretending Misty was Alice dancing to this very song. It was an image that shifted his storybook perception of her to something far more human. Sitting there with his head bobbing to the beat, he longed to inhale spearmint. He wanted to smell sweet, exotic smoke.
What he got was the stale scent of cigarettes instead.
Misty had danced her way across the room to stand in front of her brother, swaying her hips as she ran her hands along the length of her sides. She placed a hand on his chest and straddled his legs, then lowered herself onto his lap as he swallowed his nerves.
“Misty,” he croaked, desperate to get away without pushing her aside. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings; she didn’t need another wound to nurse.
“Come on,” Misty whispered. Leaning in just enough, she let her lips drag across his temple. “How do you expect to handle the record-store girl if you’ve never been with a girl before?”
Michael squirmed. He dug his fingers into the blanket beneath him and clenched his teeth, wanting nothing more than to bolt upright and run out the door. When her lips grazed the lobe of his ear, he squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could. He willed himself to imagine Alice in her place, but the scent of nicotine kept him from disconnecting. Had Misty been chewing spearmint gum, Michael would have lost himself completely. A kiss from a girl like that—he could only imagine it. And what he did imagine lingered on the fringes of heaven.
Misty’s hands slithered across his torso. She gyrated on top of him, her mouth trailing away from his ear, beginning a slow descent toward his mouth.
Michael’s pulse drowned out the music. He felt queasy, skittish, afraid to open his eyes, knowing that as soon as he saw Misty’s face so close to his, he’d twist away from her and plead for her to stop.
But they snapped open anyway, responding to three harsh words.
“What the fuck?”
Before Michael knew what was happening, Rebel was jerking Misty off him and shoving her across the room. Michael opened his mouth to speak—to explain that it wasn’t Misty’s fault—but Reb’s fist crashed against his teeth. A bloom of hot pain mingled with a sudden metallic taste. Reb pulled back and nailed him again, splitting Michael’s lip.
Blood filled Michael’s mouth. He ducked into a protective position, shielding his head from his brother’s blows.
Rebel didn’t hold back. He pounded his fists against Michael’s shoulders. His arms. His back. He aimed for Michael’s kidneys before stumbling backward, haggard with rage.
Michael peeked out from behind his hair in time to catch Reb veering around. He grabbed Misty by the front of her fringed shirt and slammed her hard into the wall. The needle on the record zippered across the black plastic grooves.
“You filthy fuckin’ whore,” he hissed into her face. “You’re disgusting.” He gave her a parting shove and stomped out of the room.
Michael watched Misty straighten her halter and pull back her shoulders in a prideful sort of way. He admired her for being able to shake it off, but he wasn’t as composed. Gathering himself up off of Misty’s bed, he kept his head down as he slumped to the door. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t even bring himself to apologize for the trouble he’d gotten her into. He simply slipped out of her room and back into his. He curled up on his bed, his head still encased in his arms, the sorrowful lyrics of that song spiraling through his brain.
• • •
Michael joined the Morrows at the dinner table for their usual six p.m. ritual. He slid into his seat and bowed his head as if in silent prayer. Wade’s eyes jumped from Michael’s split lip to Misty Dawn’s bruised face. With a furrowing of eyebrows, he finally spoke. “I miss somethin’?”
Momma shifted in her chair and dropped a fresh-baked roll onto her plate, then offered the table an indifferent shrug. Every now and again, Michael pictured her the way she must have been as a girl—distant, distracted, stuck inside her own head.
“The girl needed to be shown her place,” she said, serving herself a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes.
“And Michael?” Wade’s attention shifted to the younge
st member of their brood.
Michael kept his head down as he pulled at the strings of his frayed jeans. Rebel cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.
“These two like pretendin’ they’re best friends,” Reb explained. “I figured they’d want to match.”
Michael looked up and caught Rebel grinning. Momma was too. Neither one was looking at the other, but both of them were leering like a pair of electric eels.
10
* * *
RAY HAD LEARNED how to steal from his mother. Momma never took Lauralynn or Misty Dawn anywhere, but Ray, being the only boy, was occasionally spoiled with a trip into town. These sojourns were little more than a visit to the local grocery store to pick up milk and eggs and, if Ray was lucky, a box of Hamburger Helper or some Sloppy Joe sauce and buns. But grocery stores had lots to steal, and he livened up these mundane journeys with his own brand of fun.
From as early as he could remember, he watched Momma pull things off of shelves, consume them, and stash the empty containers in other aisles. She did this with Cokes and Popsicles and bakery items. During one trip, she let Ray eat an entire box of cookies, then casually left the empty packaging in the bread aisle.
Ray was only caught once. A store manager grabbed him by the ear and searched him for the roll of Lifesavers he’d shoved into his pocket only seconds before. Momma materialized behind them with her hard stare and her line-tight lips. The manager demanded an apology, but when Momma laughed in his face, both she and Ray were booted from the store.
But the first real thing that Ray stole hadn’t come from a grocery store, but a fireworks tent along the side of the highway.
He was eleven and the Morrows were on their way back from their yearly visit to the county fair. Ray had spotted the tent on the way over, and he banged the back window of the truck to get his father’s attention. Wade raised a hand as if to tell the boy to hold his horses. The vehicle rambled onto the dirt shoulder and Momma and Wade slid out of the cab while the Morrow kids bounded out of the truck bed. Ray was the first to step under the tent’s scalloped vinyl canopy, those red-and-white stripes making him think of candy canes and circus clowns. The setting sun gave the glossy shrink-wrapped packages of bottle rockets and aerial repeaters a mystical glow.
Ray didn’t know he was going to steal anything until he saw the box of bright-red balls marked CHINA CHERRIES. Had they been black and five times larger, they’d have been straight out of a cartoon. Ray shot a look over his shoulder. His siblings had gathered around a table display featuring enormous variety packs. It was the wimpy stuff that the fireworks manufacturers tried to pawn off as “fun for the whole family,” but all you ended up with was a bunch of duds and a headache from all the smoke. Two men worked the tent, both of them distracted. One was packing things up at the far end of the pavilion. The other was chatting up Momma and Wade, probably crossing his fingers for one final sale. Ray looked back at the box of cherry bombs, grabbed one in each hand, and shoved them into his pockets.
Wade ended up splurging on a pack of sparklers for Michael and the girls, which Ray had zero interest in. Wade deemed everything else as too expensive. “It’s like settin’ good money on fire,” he had complained. “We may as well sit on the back porch and light dollar bills.” Ray normally would have whined, but he kept quiet and tried not to draw attention to himself while the cherry bombs sat lumpy in his pockets. He kept his hands perfectly positioned against his legs and idly wandered back to the truck. If he had tried to be any more casual, he would have been kicking at the dirt and whistling the jingle from the Andy Griffith Show.
He did his damnedest to be patient, but patience didn’t come easy to ten-year-old boys. He managed to hold out for two whole days before stepping into the backyard, nervous but casual. Lauralynn was fussing over her rabbits. Misty Dawn was sitting in the sunshine on a ratty old blanket. She was brushing the hair of a naked baby doll with a missing arm—the kind that opened and closed its eyes depending on how you held it. Michael was skirting the trees, hunting for beetles or worms or bird feathers. Ray squared his shoulders and crossed the yard to meet his brother along the edge of the woods.
“Hey, Mikey,” he said. “Got somethin’ for ya.” Ray ducked behind Wade’s tool shed, motioning for Michael to follow.
Michael dropped what he was doing and ran after his big brother, a wide smile spread across his six-year-old face. “Whaddya got?” he asked, excited to see what Ray would produce out of the depths of his front pocket. Ray pulled out one of the bombs, holding it for Michael to see.
“Candy?” Michael asked, wide-eyed.
“No, dummy, it’s a firework. Got it for your birthday.”
“Really?” Michael’s face lit up with excitement. The Morrows didn’t know when Michael’s birthday really was, so they had switched it to the anniversary of his arrival instead. It was coming up on three years since Ray had brought home the wailing, blubbering kid who had told them he was four.
“Hold out your hand,” Ray instructed. Michael did as he was told, and Ray placed the bright-red sphere in his brother’s small palm. “This is a special firework,” he explained. “I’m gonna light the fuse, and when I do you gotta cup it like this.” Ray put his hands together as if holding a bird. Michael mimicked him. “And when it goes off, you’re gonna get a real big surprise, see? But you gotta hold on to it, otherwise it ain’t gonna work.”
“Is it gonna be cool?” Michael asked.
Ray fished a lighter he’d stolen from the kitchen out of his back pocket.
“Oh yeah,” he said with a grin. “It’s gonna be great. You’ll never forget it.” Kind of like how he’d never really forgotten Lauralynn holding Michael in that fun house, how Ray had vanished, so easily replaced.
He sparked a flame at the top of the old BIC lighter and leaned in, lighting the cherry bomb’s one-inch fuse. It caught and began to smoke as Michael stood there with a smile, cupping the explosive just as Ray had told him to.
“Now don’t move,” Ray told him as he backed away, light-headed with the sudden rush of adrenaline. This was it—it was really going to happen. That cherry bomb was going to go off, and it was going to blow that stupid kid’s hands clean off. Hell, maybe it would tear his arms off entirely. Maybe the blast would be so strong that it would obliterate half his face and blind him in the process. Ray grinned to himself, knowing that Michael wouldn’t be seeing the inside of a hospital no matter how bad it was. Momma and Wade didn’t believe in doctors. They said hospitals asked too many questions and doctors stole people’s money. When Ray had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm at Michael’s age, Wade had slapped a couple of scraps of wood together and made a hillbilly splint. Breaking his arm had hurt, but it hadn’t been all bad. The pain had won Ray his first taste of whiskey. For the two months he wore that wooden arm around, he could take swigs of booze anytime he wanted, no questions asked.
But Michael would need more than liquor for this. He’d need a miracle, and even that wasn’t guaranteed to save his life. He’d bleed out quick. He might even be dead before Wade and Momma figured out where the bang had come from.
Ray narrowed his eyes as the fuse burned down toward Michael’s hands. Lauralynn would be upset—it was the only thought that nearly convinced him that this plan was a bad one. But Lauralynn would get over it. She was strong. Ray would get her another kid if she wanted—a girl this time . . . someone who wouldn’t step on his toes.
Ray turned his head away from Michael for a moment to look back at Lauralynn and her rabbit cage. But rather than seeing his sister and her bunnies, he saw Wade coming up fast. In his anticipation, he hadn’t bothered to check where Wade and Momma were, and Wade had been not more than ten feet away, inside the shed.
Wade shoved Ray to the side so hard that the boy went skidding onto his ass. He watched his father grab Michael’s hands, pluck the bomb out of his palms, and chuck the firework into the trees. The thing exploded with a massive BOOM! before it ever hit t
he ground, sending a few branches of a dead pine flying to the forest floor. Michael jumped at the noise. He stared into the woods with wide, startled eyes, then looked to Wade with confusion.
“But I was supposed to hold on to it,” he said. “That was mine!”
Ray winced and began to scramble to his feet to avoid whatever was coming to him, but he wasn’t quick enough. Wade came up behind him, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and shoved him inside the tool shed. That’s where he proceeded to beat the hell out of him with the buckle-end of his belt. He beat him so badly that by the end of it, Ray couldn’t tell if it hurt anymore. He left that shed with the back of his shirt bloodied and the seat of his jeans so numb he could hardly walk straight. When he hobbled past Momma on the back porch, she didn’t say a word. She didn’t even bother looking up from the string beans she was working on, snapping the ends off with the flick of a wrist, much like the way Ray wanted to snap Michael’s scrawny neck.
Ray had to crawl up the stairs to get to his room, and when he finally reached the top, his lips pulled back in a sneer. He resented the fact that his bedroom had been split in two, one side for him, the other for the kid he’d nearly wiped off the face of the earth. Pulling himself into the room, he looked out the window, rage boiling the blood in his veins. One story below, Michael was surrounded by his siblings and father. Lauralynn had wrapped her arms around him in her usual protective embrace. Even Wade was squatting in empathy, bringing himself down to Michael’s line of sight. Ray never got that kind of attention. When he broke his arm, Wade told him to suck it up and Lauralynn’s doting tapered off after a few days.
Later that day, Wade raided Ray’s side of the room and came up with the second stolen bomb. When he found it, he raised his arm over his head, ready to lay into his firstborn again. But he had shown mercy when he saw the blood on the back of Ray’s shirt. Had it been Momma, compassion wouldn’t have entered the equation.