At Risk of Being a Fool

by Jeanette Cottrell

“Ah. Well, about community service, I had a sudden notion. There’s this memory loss facility near my home. I do a lot of volunteer work there.” The strain was back in her voice.

  “They’ll let a felon work in a nursing home?”

  “If I bring her, they will. Talk about short-handed! Retirement homes are so depressing, a lot of people won’t work there, and the ones who do are collapsing under the load. So I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? I’ll take Sorrel with me sometimes in the evenings, to help with dinner and activities. Maybe a Saturday or two? If that’s all right?”

  “She’s okay with this?” He heard the suspicion in his voice, and tried to downplay it. “She wants to volunteer?”

  “She seems to. I suppose it’s mostly the idea of getting out of Bright Futures. It’s not the most congenial environment, especially now. Besides, I can make her study more if she’s under my thumb.”

  “Ah, so you’d be there all the time. You’d have to sign papers and stuff, acknowledging supervisory responsibility. Are you sure you want to bother?”

  “Yes, I do. Most definitely.”

  “Listen, it sounds to me like she’s trying something. She was pushing me a day or two ago, but I didn’t give her any happy answers. If she is pulling something, she’s going to get bounced right back to Corrections. She’ll be worse off than she is right now.”

  “Randy, I know what you’re saying. But this is important.”

  Randy reran the conversation in his mind. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Do you know what this is about? For real, for sure?”

  “I think so.” More strongly, “Yes, I know for sure.”

  “So tell me.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I have to ask.”

  “You have to ask, but you don’t want to know, because you won’t want to write it down in her file. So you won’t ask.”

  “Am I going to be sorry?”

  “Hold on.”

  Sorrel’s voice sounded on the other end of the line. “Randy?” It didn’t sound like her at all. “Randy, please, let me do this. I really want to.”

  “Sorrel. I’m going out on a limb for you. So is Jeanie, big time. You hear me?”

  “I hear you. I know it.” She sounded strange, a little hoarse.

  “Are you going to let us down?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  Randy closed his eyes. Past experience argued fiercely against it.

  “I swear to you, it’s for Tiffany. It’s so I can be with my family again. Randy, am I going to screw that up? I love my grandma. These people at the old age home, they’re like my grandma, and they need help. I know I’ve lied to you before. But I’m not going to hurt my chances of going home. Am I?”

  “Not if you realize that you’re doing it, no.”

  “If I louse this up, if I run away, or take stupid chances, I’m back in Corrections until I’m twenty-one. Right? I’m not going risk that.”

  In spite of his better judgment, Randy found that he agreed. “Well. I’ll put through the paperwork, and Jeanie’s going to have to sign her name in blood about a dozen times.”

  “I will too.”

  Sorrel’s signature wasn’t worth a piece of scrap paper. She loved her daughter, though. He trusted her love for Tiffany, but that was about it. “Okay, girl. Put Jeanie back on. And don’t louse it up.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “She’ll be glad to see you,” the nurse said. “She hasn’t had many visitors.”

  “No?” Jeanie said.

  “None at all, in fact, except for policemen. Not even phone calls.” Suppressed satisfaction lurked in the nurse’s voice. Estelle had made her usual saintly impression.

  “Oh.” Jeanie considered the paperbacks in her hand. It was just a thought she’d had, to drop off some books, whiz in, and whiz out. Books were better than flowers. Here, Estelle, something to read, get better soon, bye.

  “You can go right in.”

  “Thank you.” Jeanie walked slowly down the hall.

  “You’ve missed it,” the nurse called, “it’s just behind you.”

  “I know. I mean, I have something to do first.” Jeanie scuttled to the small waiting area at the end of the hall, and looked blindly out the window. Estelle had been here for three days. She had no friends. If she had family, they didn’t want to visit her. Jeanie fingered the paperbacks in her hands. Books had always been friends to her, but they hardly compared to someone who actually cared if you hurt. Jeanie could have fed pets with a willing heart, watered flowers, or brought books. The wisp of a notion to question Estelle vanished at the thought of Estelle’s trauma. Questioning Estelle was a minefield better left untrodden. And apart from thorny subjects of students and pipe bombs, what on earth could she say?

  Jeanie found her feet leading her down the hall. Oh God, not again. Her feet had minds of their own, and dragged her into countless problems. There was no point in fighting them. Feet were stubborn, and they hurt a lot when they were mad at you. Jeanie paused at the doorway. Here goes nothing.

  “Hello, Estelle. It’s Jeanie McCoy. We met at Bright Futures.”

  Blankets covered a metal framework over Estelle’s body, and hid most of the damage. A white shield of gauze covered one side of her face, the rest of it prickled and swollen, as though she’d run into a cactus. Bandages swathed her right arm, elbow to wrist. The bomb, Jeanie remembered, was behind the accelerator. The floor took the greatest force of the explosion. Like Bryce Wogan, either she’d been lucky, or the bomb was deliberately nonlethal.

  Estelle didn’t seem to feel lucky. Her eyes, silver-gray in the mangled face, radiated suspicion, defense, and resentment. In fact, she looked a lot like Sorrel. Jeanie caught the back of the armchair to steady herself. “I brought you some books.”

  Estelle stared at her in silence.

  “I’m Sorrel’s teacher. And Brynna’s. I thought you’d want some books to read. Unless your hands hurt too much to hold them.”

  “Thank you.” The voice sounded like a hunk of granite hauled over gravel, hoarse and grating.

  “I just thought, to pass the time, you know. Mysteries, different styles. I’ve always liked them.”

  Estelle’s lips tightened. “I said thanks. You’ve brought them. You can go.”

  She sounded like Sorrel, too, or like Brynna. The parallel piqued her interest. Reject others before they reject you. Jeanie’s urge to run evaporated, and her pixyish recalcitrance came to the fore. She slid into the chair, putting the books on the side table.

  “I notice you don’t have the TV on,” said Jeanie. Mentally, she replaced Estelle Torrez with an angry student. She’d often played the part of a rubber wall or a punching bag, something safe for the lunatic to pound or claw.

  “Television is tedious in the extreme.”

  “Perhaps some conversation, then?”

  “I think not,” said Estelle, with a jab of disdain. “I don’t require the charity of your time or conversation, thank you much.” The lines of her face deepened, as she added with an effort at civility, “I do appreciate your effort, but I hardly think we have anything in common.”

  “Kids?”

  “Delinquents, you mean.” Estelle corrected.

  “Now, now, Estelle,” Jeanie mocked gently. “They’re not delinquents any more. They’re juvenile offenders. I know, because I read the research. Including a paper written recently by one Estelle Torrez, extolling the use of the justice model in the juvenile system.”

  The shot went home. Estelle flushed and her mouth opened. She shut it and looked out the window. She said nothing.

  “An interesting paper, Estelle. A prestigious magazine in the corrections world, or so I’m told.”

  There was no response.

  “Personally,” said Jeanie provocatively, “I’ve always preferred the rehabilitative model in juvenile corrections.” This was a dagger thrown. It hit its target,
bulls-eye.

  “Rubbish,” snapped Estelle, glaring at Jeanie. “The rehabilitative model has been outmoded since nineteen seventy-five. The recidivism is horrific.”

  Jeanie raised her eyebrows. Very few people could use the word recidivism correctly, let alone say it without stammering. “Hardly horrific. Statistics are one thing, but anecdotal research displays the folly of ignoring the human side of crime. Just last year—”

  Estelle’s face lost its slackness. The joy of battle gleamed as she marshaled arguments. Jeanie crossed her fingers behind her back and settled in for the long haul.

  Her good deed for the day: fight with Estelle.

  ~*~

  “Three oranges go south at thirty miles an hour,” said Kherra gravely, “and there’s about seven apples goin’ northeast at fifty miles an hour. What are you goin’ to get when they crash in Silverton?”

  Sorrel looked up into the concerned face overhead. Kherra’s cornrowed hair descended into beaded braids that shook as she broke into a chuckle. “I’m sorry, girl, here you’re tryin’ to concentrate, and I’m messin’ with you. The girls said I had to take a break. I figured I’d wander back here. I wondered where you’d got to.”

  Sorrel’s muscles ached with tension. She closed her eyes. It could have been worse. She could have been stuck at Bright Futures, instead of here with a nosy fat woman. Saturdays were bathroom cleaning day, scrubbing the shower stalls. Getting wet wasn’t a good idea. Hiding the small bulge would have been torture. So she’d traded a day at Bright Futures for a day with flaked-out old ladies and nosy nurses, a whole day spent watching her tongue.

  “Hidin’ out?”

  “Gotta study my math,” Sorrel muttered. “GED test coming up.”

  “Smart thinkin’. This place is probably getting’ to you. It gets to a lot of people. Sad.”

  “I’m glad to be here,” said Sorrel.

  “Uh huh.”

  What did she mean by that? She’d done her best with all these old people, with their damned walkers, and wobbly voices, and stubbornness, of I-will-do-this-my-way, when dressing would be so much faster if they’d just stand there, for God’s sake. She hadn’t lost her temper once, and she was proud of it. But it struck her as a little funny. When a math book started to look good, it was a bad sign.

  “Sorry,” Kherra said, with a sidelong glance. “It’s just, you’re thinkin’ one thing, and sayin’ another. Take it easy, girl. Say what you want to me. I don’t tell on anybody. It’s my biggest vice, bein’ curious. If I was a cat, I’d have died a hundred times already.”

  Effortlessly, Kherra transformed the pile of laundry into neat stacks of towels and sheets, each folded with machine-like precision. She wore a large T-shirt that read: Please, God, if you can’t make me skinny, make my friends fat.

  “You got any questions? You could bug me, instead of me buggin’ you.”

  Actually, she did. It had bugged her since the first afternoon Jeanie’d hauled her over here. “Yeah. How come you guys named an old folks home after a baseball team? It’s stupid.”

  “Oriole’s Nest? Girl, you’re one after my own heart. Just what I said! It’s not even like we’re on the right coast. Baltimore, I ask you. But it turns out, an oriole’s a bird, little thing with yellow spots. You learn something new every day, that’s what I say. And now you’re thinkin’,” said Kherra easily, “that I’m makin’ fun of you. Well, I’m not. Can’t prove it, though. Tell me, what do you think’s behind all this bomb stuff?”

  “Huh?” Sorrel said, baffled.

  Kherra’s mouth quirked and she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. Workin’ here, I’ve learned to break the ice hard and fast, but sometimes I forget and use a sledgehammer. My word, the look on your face! Forget I asked. It’s just, we’ve got our own idea, Jeanie and me. I just thought I try bouncin’ it off you, see what you think.”

  “What’s that?” Sorrel said.

  Kherra sobered. “Well, first there’s the construction site, one of those government recreation places for low-income families, right? I remember when it first went in, there was a lot of vandalism from the gangs. Don’t look at me like that. There’s gangs in Salem, and only a possum doesn’t know it. The thing is, when there’s free entertainment kids could be going to, the gang membership drops off. So, they weren’t any too happy about that place going in, in the first place. So now, there’s an expansion, and somebody plants a bomb. Anybody could’ve picked it up. Might have been Bryce, Danny, or even Quinto. Right? So, that’s the first one. Once you start looking at gang involvement, the bomb at the courthouse makes a lot more sense, don’t it?”

  “You mean, there’s a girl in Futures who belongs to a local gang? But hurting Torrez just causes trouble.”

  Kherra slapped the desk. “Exactly. There’s no motive for any one livin’ there right now. If the woman’s such poison, you can bet her neighbors aren’t fond of her, or anybody else she meets. It’s likely she’s tangled with some gang members, or even more likely, some are related to girls she booted out of the program. Ones that aren’t there anymore. Well? Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

  “Some,” said Sorrel. She put the pencil down carefully. “You figured that out on your own?”

  “Nope, Jeanie and me, we’ve been talkin’. She badgered Mrs. Torrez’s building manager. And some of the people at the recreation facility, too. You put bits of information together, it’s amazin’ what you find. She wasn’t sure it all went together, so I thought I’d try it out on you. Think it over, huh?”

  A thready voice sounded in the hallway. “Bernie? Where are you, Bernie?”

  Kherra bounded into the hall. “Leda, honey, what’s the trouble? You lookin’ for Bernie? Isn’t he around here? Maybe he’s gone home, what do you think, hmm?”

  “He said he’d be here,” fretted Leda. One hand clawed at Kherra’s sleeve.

  Kherra set a gentle arm around her shoulders and walked her down the hall. “I know he did. He loves you something fierce, I know that. Bernie was braggin’ on your cookin’ just last week. He was talkin’ about Thanksgivin’ one year, said you made about eighteen kinds of pie, best turkey a man ever threw a lip over, hmm hmm. I tell you, I about died listenin’ to him. My mama couldn’t cook worth nothin’.” Kherra’s voice faded, the words floating behind her. “If it didn’t come straight out of a cracker box, she wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

  Sorrel’s heart slowed to normal. The tension flowed out through her fingertips and spilled on the floor, leaving her limp, exhausted, and at peace. The bombs were just local gang stuff, all of it. It had nothing to do with that shithead. Or even Brynna’s antics, because Brynna was from Portland. In fact, all the class except Rosalie came from Portland. It wasn’t anybody from the class at all.

  She watched Kherra, and noticed the hallway as if for the first time.

  A big oval walking track with a rubberized floor ringed the inside of the building. A dining room sat on each end, outside the track. The residents’ rooms were in little cul-de-sacs off the dining rooms. Inside the ring were small living room areas. One was formal with paintings and high-backed sofas. Another was light-hearted with animal wallpaper, a huge birdcage with finches, and an aquarium. There was even a place set up like an ice cream parlor. The garden out back had benches, a gazebo, and big raised flowerbeds.

  Sometimes it seemed like a nice hotel, the fancy kind. Then Sorrel would come to an exit door and realize she needed a keypad combination to leave. She knew the combination. She’d tested it over and over again.

  Halfway down the hall, she saw the back of Jeanie’s head. She was sitting with Edward, talking, showing him pictures of the grandkids. He didn’t have a clue. All through dinnertime he kept going on and on about some kind of mess-up in the CIA, something about submarines.

  A nurse named Marlo intercepted Kherra and Leda. Marlo shook a finger at Kherra and headed off with Leda. Kherra returned to the office.

  “They won’t let me do anyth
in’ around here. They figure since I’m doin’ a double shift I should take it easy. Excuse me.” Kherra extracted several patient charts from a stack on the desk, and flipped the top one open, making notations in a quick, neat hand. “So, what do you think of our—scenario.” Kherra winked, drawing out the word dramatically.

  “Sounds okay to me. What’s your accent from?” said Sorrel, hoping to change the subject to something less dangerous.

  “A touch of the Virginia Reel, with some of the islands thrown in. Mama was from Jamaica. Daddy was a Southern boy.”

  “That’s your Mama who cooks out of a cracker box.”

  “There’s a lot you can do with a cracker box. My Mama makes the best pan-fried oysters you ever ate. So, okay, I’ve got another question for you. Is Jeanie doing okay, or is that outside the scope of this little talk?”

  “Like what? I guess she’s okay. She’s just a teacher.”

  “Hmm. Teachers are people, too. Jeanie have any friends, that you know about?”

  “There’s Mackie. And you.”

  Kherra shook her head, dissatisfied. “Dang it.”

  “She did something funny at the park. She was picking up things under the trees. Then later, when we dropped Corrigan at the house, she went and planted them.”

  “She’s plantin’ acorns.” Kherra chuckled. “Don’t look like that, girl, she’s not out of her mind yet. She’s got this thing about oak trees. They take hundreds of years to grow up to any size, so she’s took to plantin’ ‘em herself. Says you can’t trust the squirrels to do it.”

  “Why bother, if they take that long to grow?”

  “Somebody’s got to bother. I’ve planted a few myself, since she told me.”

  Kherra bolted out of her seat and ran into the hallway. Belatedly, Sorrel heard a high-pitched screaming. She followed, but Kherra was halfway down the hallway, moving at a speed Sorrel couldn’t believe. Kherra disappeared into a bedroom as a frizzy-haired woman in a pink bathrobe emerged. Phyllis, that was her name. Marlo ran up and tucked an arm around Phyllis’ waist.

  “What is it?” Sorrel panted, skidding up behind them.

  Phyllis stood trembling in her bedroom doorway. “A man,” she quavered. She pointed a shaking finger into her room.