Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Not Devin’s sister, though.”

  It was starting to get hot. The shade had moved.

  Eventually a man showed up and met the woman. They got into a car and drove away.

  “Look at those guys,” Jolie said. Her gaze was directed toward the top end of the park, where there was a privet hedge and a large ash tree.

  “Juggalos?”

  A big kid and a skinny kid, the fat kid sitting in the shade from the ash tree, the skinny one on the picnic table with his combat-boot-clad feet on the bench. Working their cell phones.

  “That’s what Devin was,” Jolie said, even though it was obvious.

  The kids could have been any age from middle school to high school. The skinny kid had his back to them. His jeans were at half-mast, his boxer shorts—red and yellow print—peeking out above. Landry could see the crack of the kid’s ass. Disgusting. The kid was shirtless, his torso a dirty tan—he was skinny but unformed, with no muscle mass. Like a stick of caramel. His back and shoulders were marred by several tattoos. He had a greasy ponytail. Landry carefully raised the binocs. The biggest tattoo on the kid’s back was easy to read: “GO TO HELL,” in an Old English font—the type you might see penned by monks.

  The fatter one was blond and had a buzzcut. He wore a long black shirt over dungarees. The armholes of the shirt were cut out and revealed fleshy arms—huge but without an ounce of muscle. His bicep (if you could call it that) was tattooed with a weird running man holding an ax. Landry knew it was a Juggalo tattoo, very popular. There were studs on his chin, his lip, and his nose. Two pieces of hardware snared his eyebrows like fishhooks.

  Landry spotted a shocking-pink liquid in a clear jug between them: Faygo.

  Jolie muttered, “What are the odds?”

  They waited. Their chances of seeing the kid again had gone from fifty-fifty to sixty-forty, or better.

  It could be that Juggalos were everywhere. They’d just have to see.

  They waited.

  And waited.

  It got hot, so they drove away, hit a dollar store, and bought a tablecloth and a couple of paperbacks and something to drink.

  They parked a block or two away and walked out to the opposite end of the park from the Juggalo kids, in the deep dark shade of a eucalyptus tree. They spread out their tablecloth and sat under it and took turns watching through the binocs.

  Just after noon, Jolie stiffened. “I see something at two o’clock,” she said.

  Landry leaned close. He inhaled her perfume, which was, in his opinion, light and tropical. “Is it the sister?”

  “I think so. Different clothes.”

  Landry squinted at the sidewalk alongside the road, and saw the stick figure in the distance. “It’s her.”

  She still wore the jeans, but had changed to a black sleeveless top that looked long and sloppy—like the one on the big kid—and chunky, blinding-white athletic shoes. Her hair was loose and looked uncombed, hanging in her face.

  Jolie said, “That’s a lot of ink.”

  She had several tattoos. There were holes in the tank top. They looked like they had been cut into the material on purpose, kind of like holes in Swiss cheese.

  Willow joined the boys under the tree, climbing up onto the picnic table and assuming the position: feet on the bench, elbows on knees, hands propping up her chin.

  Landry soon figured out what the dynamics were. It didn’t seem like Willow was the girlfriend of either one of them, although he wasn’t completely sure about that. He looked at Jolie. He’d been known not to peg relationships correctly, a time or two. “What do you think about their situation?” he asked her.

  “Friends?”

  “That’s my guess.” That made two of them, which was better than one. Both having come to a similar conclusion.

  The girl was eating candy out of a bag. M&M’s, Landry thought. In the vernacular, they were “hanging out.” Landry wondered if the kids today had a different term for it. He remembered being in high school and just hanging out. Usually he and his buddies were up to no good. Small stuff, though—nothing serious.

  The serious stuff had come later. After he joined the military.

  The girl stood up and shouldered her backpack. One of the boys reached into his wallet and handed her some money.

  Landry couldn’t tell how much it was. It could be hundred-dollar bills or just a few bucks. “What do you think?” he asked Jolie. “What are they giving her money for?”

  Jolie shrugged.

  The girl walked off. Young, slim, pretty, her whole life ahead of her. Except her brother was dead and she lived in a dump and hung out with Juggalos.

  Landry smelled marijuana about the same time Jolie said, “They’ve got a joint.”

  Landry shrugged. “Maybe it’s medicinal.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They waited.

  “She’ll come back,” Landry said, although he didn’t have to. They both knew the boys had given her money, they both knew that they were “hanging out,” and they both knew she would come back with something. Legal or illegal, they had no idea.

  Fourteen years old.

  “You think she has a drug connection?” Jolie said.

  “Probably.”

  “Big brave boys, sending a little girl to do their dirty work.”

  “If that’s the case.”

  “Yeah, if that’s the case.”

  He glanced over at her, sitting there in the shade, for all the world just a happy woman with her lover, resting her elbows on the ground, face tilted toward the few places of sunshine spattering through the leaves above.

  A good-looking woman.

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  “You want them to notice us?” she said, after returning his kiss.

  They’d just avoided a makeout session. Landry tried to get his mind back on business. “I’m sure they’ve seen it a thousand times before,” he said. “Right here in this park. We fit right in.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jolie shaded her eyes and looked in the direction of the road Willow had taken. It ran downhill to a stop sign. She’d turned right, and had disappeared behind a row of houses.

  “The Quik Mart is two blocks down that street,” Landry said.

  “Not city blocks, though. Two short blocks.”

  “Yeah. All the blocks are short around here.”

  The two boys seemed oblivious to Landry and Jolie. They were joking around. One of them—the skinny one—brayed like a donkey. He drank the last of the Faygo and set the jug on the picnic table bench beside him.

  They waited.

  It was pleasant. There were grackles in the trees across the way, loud and obnoxious. Water sprinklers came on, but nowhere near them. Droplets of water shimmered in the sun.

  But Willow did not come back.

  The sprinkler was the kind that rotated, shooting streams of water in a long radius.

  “Rainbow,” Jolie said, pointing at the spray.

  Landry checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes. “You think she’s coming back?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You think she’s doing a deal for them?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The Juggalo boys pulled out a Frisbee and threw that for a little while. Not long. The overweight one lost interest quickly enough.

  “I think they’re passing time,” Landry said.

  “Waiting for her to come back?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There she is.” Jolie nodded at the sloping street. The girl had just made the corner and was walking along.

  They followed her progress up the street. Had she done a drug deal? Did she go to get them more snacks? She swung a p
lastic bag in her hand, a grocery bag. Maybe there was a grocery store down around the corner.

  She came closer.

  The boys were now sitting side by side on the picnic table, their feet on the bench.

  She reached the one-lane street that fronted the park. It was uphill. There were several parked cars, nose to tail, on the street. Parked out front of the houses, which looked like they had been built after World War II.

  She was partway across the little street when a car door opened.

  A guy said something to her.

  She stopped.

  Middle of the narrow street, but there were no cars coming either way. It was a neighborhood street, no traffic to speak of.

  Bag dropping to her side, she stepped toward the man and the car.

  Landry pegged him as midtwenties to thirty. He looked like a young father. Wore shorts and a tee and athletic shoes. He leaned down to talk to her, and for a moment it looked like an earnest conversation.

  Then he grabbed her arm.

  She struggled, pulled away.

  The boys on the bench took off like a pair of rockets.

  Landry and Jolie were twenty feet behind them.

  The man was wrestling Willow into the car. He was winning. He looked up and saw four people pelting down the hill toward him.

  Willow managed to shake herself loose, dropped her bag, and ran for the two Juggalo kids.

  She launched herself into the arms of one, legs wrapped around him, head buried in his neck. The second kid took a roundhouse punch at the guy, but missed, tripped, and fell on his butt.

  The guy half-in, half-out of the car, the door open, tried to start the car. The car caught, then stalled as Landry reached the car door and slammed it hard on the man’s bare leg.

  He screamed like a banshee.

  Landry opened the car door and dragged him out. The guy fell onto the asphalt and curled up in a ball, holding his leg. The foot above his athletic shoe had been crushed and partially severed. Blood soaked the white athletic shoe and smeared the asphalt. The man’s screams were manic.

  Landry pulled his head back by his hair and slammed his forehead against the pavement.

  The screaming stopped.

  Landry looked at the Juggalo who wasn’t holding on to Willow. The guy who wasn’t stroking her hair and telling her it was all right. The guy who wasn’t squatting down beside her and talking softly.

  Landry looked down. The car guy, kidnapper guy—whatever you wanted to call him—was squirming on the ground. Murder in his eyes. “I’m gonna kill you, man!” Landry saw the empty knife scabbard just as the car guy raised his arm. “Knife!” he shouted as he raised his foot to stomp the man’s arm. But Jolie was ahead of him. She grabbed the car guy by the arm and wrenched it around hard. There was an audible snap. The knife clattered to the pavement. “You don’t want to do that,” she told him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who doesn’t want to see you go to jail.”

  The fight went out of him like air out of a tire. He was too busy writhing in pain.

  Landry ripped the car guy’s T-shirt off him and tied a tourniquet just below the knee. The man was heading into shock, but Landry didn’t care. He opened the back door of the car and dragged him into the backseat and laid him out. He took the man’s phone out of his pocket and snapped a photo of him with it. “Here’s something to remember the occasion by.” He threw the phone on the guy’s chest.

  The man was babbling something. He was also crying. Impossible to tell what he was saying.

  “You might lose that foot,” Landry said. “So if I were you, soon as you can manage, dial 9-1-1. You’re at . . .” He glanced at the street signs. “Olive and Trelawny.”

  The guy swooned.

  Landry slammed the car door shut.

  The overweight Juggalo said, “Holy shit, dude. Did you kill him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh, man. Who are you?”

  “I’m the Lone Ranger,” Landry said. He nodded to Jolie. “And that’s Tonto.”

  It was a quiet street and apparently no one was looking out their windows. Or if they were, they chose not to do anything. There were no sirens. Landry figured they might have to call it in themselves to make sure the guy got the medical help he needed.

  First, though, they needed to get away from here. They walked back across the street to the park and all got into Landry’s rental car.

  “Any place you want to go so we can talk?” Landry asked.

  “We can go to my place,” offered the skinny one, whose name was Luke Conaboy.

  Luke—small world. Even though Landry still considered himself a Catholic of sorts, he wasn’t religious. But the fact that the kid’s name was Luke made him feel that something powerful had happened. Kismet, fate, or whatever you wanted to call it.

  Luke said, “But the name I go by is Eezil.”

  “Easel? Like for artists?”

  “E-E-Z-I-L.”

  “What’s it mean?” Jolie asked.

  “Like I’m the illustrated man or something—put me on an easel ’cause I’m art, right? Only it’s spelled different.”

  “Yeah, that’s fresh,” said the other kid, whose name was Brian Swinney.

  Landry was confused. “You spell easel like ‘fresh’?”

  “No! Fresh! What would old folks like you say? Cool. Fresh. Got it?”

  They ended up at a small stuccoed-over block of a house. It looked like it had been built in the thirties.

  The front room was dark and old-fashioned. Lace curtains in the windows, heavy dark furniture. “My grandma likes antiques,” Luke-Eezil said. “Don’t touch anything.”

  He led them to his room.

  The room was like a den—crowded and very dark. It had been painted deep plum, and the shades were drawn. There weren’t a lot of places to sit down—just the twin bed and a cheap desk chair that had no desk to go with it. The walls were covered with art of sorts, including a black running hatchet man (Landry’d read about that) stamped into the wall at intervals in ink.

  Landry sat cross-legged on the floor with the young men while Jolie took the desk chair and Willow sat on the bed. Jolie sat quietly but expectantly, and Landry assumed that she wanted him to ask the questions and she would observe the reactions to whatever was said.

  “We won’t get in trouble, will we, man?” Eezil said.

  “Hey, what do you think?” Brian said. “They’re piggies.”

  Landry said, “I doubt anything will come of this. Just don’t boast about it.”

  “Hey, ninja, you know the truth. We were trying to save her. Look what you did!”

  Ninja? Landry wished he had a translator handy.

  “Piggy can do that, ninja,” Brian said.

  “You go to the same high school?”

  “Yeah. So who are you? You police or something, right?”

  “Or something,” Landry said.

  “So we’re all on the same page, dude. We weren’t there, didn’t see nothing, didn’t do nothing, right?”

  “Fine with me,” Landry said. He turned to Jolie.

  “Fine with me,” Jolie said.

  “Awesome!”

  “So how do you know Willow? She’s a freshman, right? You hang with freshmen?”

  “Not usually.”

  Brian fidgeted. Eezil looked away.

  Landry turned to Willow, who had sunk into the deep burgundy chenille bedspread and thin pillow. “Willow? Did you know that guy?”

  “No.” Her voice was tiny. She sounded sleepy.

  Landry looked at Jolie. Jolie leaned forward, so she was on a level with Willow. “Willow? Have you ever seen that guy before?”

  “No.”

  “Ninja. She’s been through a lot,” Eezil said. He was clearl
y the spokesman for the three of them.

  Protective.

  “How do you know Willow?” Landry asked.

  “We’re homies—were homes with her brother. Devin,” Eezil said. “Hey, you want something to drink? My grandma makes sun tea. Ninjette, go get some tea, will ya?”

  Willow just looked at him.

  “Some sun tea, for our guests here. Come on, Willow!”

  Willow got up. She wandered past them, slow and unfocused.

  “What’s with her?” Jolie asked.

  “She gets sleepy.”

  “Sleepy?”

  “Yeah, you know, like nighty-night?” He put his palms together against his cheek.

  “In the middle of the day?”

  “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Is she on drugs?”

  “Nope, doesn’t touch drugs. We wouldn’t let her even if she wanted to. Devin and me were close. Like that.” He crossed his fingers. “It sucked when he got shot.”

  “Were you there?” Landry asked.

  “Nah, we skipped last period. Lucky for us, huh?”

  “Very lucky for you.”

  “Devin was my homes.”

  His voice cracked a little, his throat full of tears.

  “What do you think about the shooting?” Landry asked. “Who did it?”

  “Some rat’s ass.”

  “Yeah,” Brian chimed in. “Weak. He better not come around here, we’ll put a hurt on his ass.”

  “The shooter is dead,” Landry said.

  “Oh.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  Landry wondered what kind of drugs they were on. He didn’t care, though. They were good kids in their way.

  Willow came in with the jar of sun tea and a stack of plastic glasses on top, holding them fast under her chin. Landry had once seen the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, where Lucia, a beautiful woman with long hair, wandered around the stage in her nightgown, distressed and out of it at the same time. Willow set the sun tea jar and glasses down on the little desk next to Jolie, then ambled over to the bed. She sat on it, smiled vaguely at them, and slumped sideways into a faint.

  “Is she all right?”

  Eezil shrugged. “That’s her way, man. Out like a light. She’ll wake up in a few.”