The rain has stopped. The sky above me clears and the raindrop stains on my clothes begin to fade. Clouds still muddy the horizon and the sun sets behind them. I feel my mouth dry out more and more, the emptiness in my stomach growing bigger than my stomach. I don’t know how I’ll ever move myself away from here to eat or sleep. My body only wants to huddle in the gloomy field. But something strange and beautiful happens: just before the light disappears behind the horizon line, there’s a rip in the clouds and the sun peers through one last time. Its rays cascade red and purple across the clouds, and in the opening the sun is a hot bloodshot eye.
I’m mesmerized by the effect, hypnotized by its sinking, until a piercing shriek jolts me. Up the field, a group of five people bunched close to each other are squeezing under the fence. There’s some pushing and shoving among them, a few more quick and sharp shrieks that assure me they’re not scared or hurt or angry. They don’t see me but move unintentionally closer, circling and pulling on each other: two girls and three boys, too old to be children, too giddy to be adults. Two of the boys have coats tied around their hips. The t-shirts they wear don’t hide the tattoos painted all over their arms and up their necks. Drawings like in a kid’s book: dragons and hearts and wild teeth and snakes and crosses and women’s red lips. Stories painted all over their bodies, maybe more amazing than any stories I’ve ever read or made up. The pictures are easier to see on the skin of the white boy, but have more color and fantasy on the skin of the black boy. The other three are more covered with clothes and I can’t see if they have similar stories on their bodies. One of the girls has blue hair and earrings looped all over her ears that jangle a bit when she whirls around the others. The second girl has hair almost as yellow as Doris’s, streaked with black. Earrings are looped through her lips and nose and over her eyebrows and there’s a diamond pinned to her right cheek under her eye. The third boy looks more like a prince than any boy I’ve ever seen. A boy so handsome, it makes me want to look away. I remember Scotty and his iceberg eyes and feel guilty. Just yesterday, I loved him more than I could bear.
The white painted boy stops moving to stretch his back, and all the others stop moving and wait for him. He takes a thin stick from his pants pocket and puts it in his mouth. A cigarette. He lights it and inhales deeply, then passes it to the blue girl. She inhales too and passes it to the diamond girl. The cigarette goes around the circle and everything they do slows down, as if they’re blowing out agitation with the smoke.
Then diamond girl sees me.
Before I can move or run or even stand up, she heads toward me. She smiles so grandly, I think it’s a mistake. “Hello, gorgeous,” she says as she wanders forward. “Aren’t you a kitten.” The others trail behind her, also smiling, like they’ve been waiting for me all along and I’m just a bit late.
I don’t move or say anything and they amble closer and closer, smiling so that all their teeth show. When they’re close enough for me to touch, they crouch around me in a half-circle like a gateway of suspicious but hospitable elves.
Diamond girl touches my elbow. “Are you lost, kitten?”
I shake my head.
They all look so fancy in their colors and skin drawings and tight-fitting clothes. Beside them, I’m awkward and messy, still wearing Mrs. O’Reardon’s baggy leftovers, her old beige button-front shirt and her gray pants strapped to my waist with a stringy belt. I wish I’d changed into my nicer clothes. Or even better, I wish I could color myself over with designs and costumes and sparkles in my face.
Diamond girl takes the cigarette from one of the painted boys and holds it out to me. “Wanna toke?”
But blue girl snatches the cigarette from her before I can take it. “Are you fucked, Mo? She’s a baby.” She looks at me and gentles her voice. “How old are you, kitten? Twelve?”
It occurs to me that the younger they think I am, the nicer they might be to me. I shrug.
Diamond girl punches blue girl’s thigh. “I was getting high at twelve, Cal.”
Blue girl rolls her eyes. “And is it something you’d recommend, Mo?”
Mo looks away, mad. But suddenly she shrieks with laughter. She leans toward me until her screeching face is inches away. “No, Twelve,” she says, “it’s not something I’d recommend.” Now, more than anything, I want to try her cigarette.
Blue girl interrupts us with a satisfied grunt. “That’s better,” she says, looking at me with curious eyes. “What’s going on, Twelve? You cool? Or you need a little TLC?”
Their bodies huddle closer around me. I want to move back, but the fence behind me blocks me in. I say, “TLC?” Without meaning to, I do sound like a baby.
“Tender loving care. We might look like gutter-punks, but we’re cool.” She takes my hand very carefully in hers. “I promise you can trust us.” She inches her head closer to mine. “Okay?” I nod. “Cool. So let me introduce ourselves. This,” she points to Mo, “is Monique. And these freaks are Tank, Justin, and Chisel.” Justin is the prince, Tank is the white painted boy, and Chisel the black one — both of them as bony as chickens. “And me, I’m Calcutta, but you can call me Cal. Got that?” I nod again. “So what’s your deal, Twelve?”
I don’t know why I tell them. Maybe because their huddled circle feels almost magical, as if we’re conjuring spells together. “I ran away.”
They all nod like they understand. “Let me guess,” Mo says. “Dumb-ass mom? Lame-ass school? Dad who thinks evil is for your own good?”
It shocks me that it’s so easy for her to say. Maybe in all of us there’s the sadness you hide from other people and the sadness you hide from yourself that other people see.
“The last one.”
They all nod again. Calcutta squeezes my arm. “You wanna live with us? We can get you food and shelter better than being alone in this crappy mud hole.”
“Except I have to get somewhere,” I say quickly, by accident.
“Yeah?” Calcutta asks. “Where’re you headed?”
“Beachport, Maine.” I didn’t know it until I said it.
“Beachport.” Tank seems to recognize it. “What’s in Beachport, Twelve?”
I don’t need to run away with no direction. There is a place I can go. “My mother.”
Justin tilts his head. He is as beautiful as a cloud. “How’re you getting to Beachport, Twelve?”
From examining maps for so many years, I know the points by heart. “I need to get to the U.S. border at St. Stephen. Then cross it somehow. Then head down along the coast.”
“Wow.” Chisel whistles. “Ambitious.”
Calcutta shakes her head. “Might be a bit too ambitious, Twelve. Not trying to discourage you. But that trip’s got a lotta loopholes in it.”
“I got here by hiding in the back of a truck.” I don’t tell them it was the back of a truck I know very well. “Figured I could get down all the way like that.”
Calcutta looks at Mo. “She’s too young to hitch.”
“Sure as fuck right,” Mo says. “She’ll get busted or she’ll get raped.” She shrugs her arms at me. “Sorry. But that’s the truth and you should know it.”
I nod even though the true implications are vague, almost meaningless.
“You can’t just hide in any truck.” Chisel says. “You don’t know where they’re going. You gotta know their destination.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Tank stands up. “She could catch out. Ride the rails to Island Yard in Saint John. The trains don’t go on to the border from there, but she’d never pass the customs inspectors anyway. From Saint John, she could try and hide in a truck that’s crossing the border. At least there she’s sort of close to the States and she can wait for an American traveling home.”
Riding the rails. It would be like a dream.
“Can’t promise anything once you’re stateside,” Tank adds, “but chances of getting to Beachport are a lot better from the other side.”
“406 at Gordon Yard would
get her to Saint John in just over two hours,” Chisel calculates.
“The 406, yeah.” Tank says. “One gets ordered up every day. Leaves the yard in the morning, midday latest.” He bobs his head. “Yeah, solid plan, man.”
“If you ignore the danger of train hopping,” Mo stands up, “the slim chances she’ll find the right truck to highjack, the border crossing where they’ll likely bust her ass and haul her back to Satan’s spawn — because the system is fucked — and the ever-possible possibility that any asshole can just come along and rape her, yeah, I think you cooked up a super-solid plan there, guys.” She sticks her thumb in her mouth and chews at the skin. “Fucking hobos.” She kneels back down in front of me. “Please, Twelve. I beg you. Stay here with us and let Cal and me be your moms.”
Calcutta rubs Mo’s back. “Mo is right, Twelve. You’d be safer with us.”
They all wait for me to say something. Even though I haven’t known them for more than fifteen minutes, I do consider staying.
But then I remember a screen in the dark and its slow-motion characters: a mother, her mournful, pleading face, her fevered, searching eyes; a father, his hand gripping hers.
Hope ignites into yearning. I have to take a chance.
Cal grabs my hand and pulls me up. “Okay, then. Let’s at least get you some food and a good night’s sleep.
The dusk gets gloomier as we walk and walk. It takes about as long as the trip between the keeper’s house and Keele’s Landing. But this route is down ordered streets, with houses and stores all along the way. The only trees are shrubs growing out of sidewalks or planted in people’s yards.
I try to move my body like Cal or Mo. An arm pumping back and forth with every step, lips smooshed together, one foot turned slightly inward. I want to try on each piece of them. To feel more real than a person who’s lost all description.
Cal stops us outside a small store on one of the corners. It looks something like the FoodMart, but smaller and with only a few aisles. There are rows of magazines and chocolate bars and canned food and cereal. It’s more disorganized than the FoodMart and, like during our winters, there’s nothing fresh like apples or lettuce on the shelves.
Cal scratches at her arm. “Dean owes me ten bucks. Think I should try and collect?”
“If we go in there,” Tank says, shaking his head, “he’ll just call the cops. He thinks we stole that loaf of bread.”
“We did steal that loaf of bread,” Mo hisses.
“We were hungry.”
Cal paces back and forth. “If he’da given me what he owes me, we wouldn’t have been hungry and we wouldn’t have needed to steal that bread.”
Justin shakes his head. “Sorry, Cal, but Dean told me he never borrowed ten bucks from you.”
“He fucking did, Justin. He wanted to borrow my bike, and when I said he couldn’t because I needed it, he said, ‘I’ll give you ten bucks,’ and so I said okay. So he borrowed my bike. Now he owes me ten bucks.”
“Dean’s a denier,” Mo says. “Also short-term memory issues.”
“Is your bike even worth ten bucks, Cal?” Justin isn’t making fun of her; he sounds reasonable.
Cal kicks her foot into the air. “Whatever. I’m hungry and he said he’d give me ten bucks.”
“Twelve, cutie?” Mo elbows me. “You go in there and steal some ramen, would ya? Be a doll.”
Cal pushes Mo. “Fucking, no! She’s not stealing anything for us. Jesus H., I hope you never have a kid.”
I check the store. It’s so much like the FoodMart. I check back with the kids. They do look very hungry. So am I. I have some money, but not much and still a long way to travel. I step closer to the window. So many packages of food inside.
Mo angles past Cal. “The ramen, Twelve. It’s on the bottom shelf in the second aisle.”
“Shut the fuck up, Mo.” Cal wrestles her back.
Mo challenges her. “It costs nothing, Cal. It’s almost not even food.”
“Don’t do it, Twelve.”
“The markup on that shit is criminal.”
“I’m sure we have something at home.”
“Yeah. Cockroaches and dead mice.”
Before I know it, I’m in the store.
The light is dazzling. Even the dust on the cans seems to gleam. Canned pineapple, canned peaches, canned carrots, canned beans. My mouth waters.
The bottom shelf. Second aisle.
I pick up six packages of ramen. I know this food. I made it often for Jonah.
The plastic crackles under my fingers. I could shove the packages into my bag. Or down my pants.
I look around. There’s a young man behind the counter who must be Dean. Like Phyllis Ketchum at the FoodMart, he also watches a small tv behind the counter. He’s chewing on a stick of beef jerky.
It’s like I don’t exist.
I could shove the ramen under my coat. I’m a fast runner.
I look back at the kids outside. They all watch me through the glass. Me inside a snow globe now. Sparkling bits raining down on me.
I squeeze the six packages in my hands. I carry them to the counter and put them down. Dean startles, then scans the packs, ringing them through the cash. “6.71.”
“Except you owe Calcutta ten bucks.”
Dean looks at me for the first time. “Did Cal send you here to do her dirty work? What a joke. Send a kid to collect.” He snorts. “What? You gonna break my legs if I don’t pay up?”
“I’m just saying you owe her money and you should pay it back.”
“How many times do I have to tell her: I. Do. Not. Owe. Her. Money. She musta been high when she got that idea in her head.”
“Did you borrow her bike?”
He blinks down at me. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“She needed her bike for herself. You said you’d pay her ten bucks, so she let you borrow it.”
Dean picks jerky out of his teeth. “Damn, you’re cute.”
He packs the ramen into a shopping bag and I grab it.
“You still owe her 3.29.”
I turn and race out of the store and down the street. Maybe I stole the ramen, maybe Dean gave it to me. For the first time, the pounding in my chest feels good. Like dancing for your one true love. The others chase after me, shrieking with laughter.
The first time I get scared is when we arrive at their house. It’s like the other houses up and down the street: rundown, pieces of siding falling off, broken steps, crazy nonsense lines painted over the walls, closed curtains behind the windows or plywood nailed across them.
It doesn’t scare me because it’s so rundown and dark, it scares me because it has the same feel as the house I’ve known all my life. A keeper’s house, full of secrets.
We don’t walk through the front door, which doesn’t look too inviting, but creep around to the back and sneak in one at a time through a basement window. Inside it’s dark as night.
Tank leads us up some wobbly stairs to the main floor. Cal and Mo start lighting candles and the wicks flicker from the bottoms of Mason jars.
The place is a wreck, with painted doodles on every wall and garbage lying around, and mattresses or cushions here and there over the floor. It’s warm, though, and the flickering light makes the walls and garbage look alive, like nature.
“You hungry?” Calcutta asks, pushing Tank toward the kitchen.
“Thirsty,” I say, because that’s the most pressing. Cal smacks her head like she’s stupid for not thinking of that, and she reaches for a plastic cup from a cupboard with no door and pulls a jug from the counter. She fills the cup with water from the jug, and I gulp it down in five seconds.
“You look like — ” Mo says, shrieking, “— c’mon, you guys, say it with me — ” She coaxes everyone with a buffeting hand. They all say it together: “Like a rose in a shit hole!”
“That’s it!” Mo jumps up and down, laughing her head off. “That’s it! A rose in a shit hole.” Everyone laughs with her. I think
of Marlie and how she looked when she first came to the island. Like a jack-rabbit pretending the wolves couldn’t see her. Like a warning of what was to come.
Calcutta pours me more water. Tank has put a fuel stove on the kitchen floor and he’s setting a pot of water on the blue and yellow flame. Cal looks at me. “You like ramen?” I nod, now able to think of my hunger. “Good, because you earned it.”
Calcutta arranges some pillows on a mattress in what I guess to be the living room and makes me sit on them. Mo joins us and we stretch out while Tank cooks us dinner. Cal says, “Tell me about your mom, Twelve.”
A picture of a mother’s face on a tv screen comes to my mind. Completely different from how I’d imagined her. “I don’t know anything about her,” I say with bated breath.
Mo slaps a pillow. Dust floats up. “You don’t know your mom? Then why are you going to her? Moms can be as shitty as dads. Shittier.”
Calcutta pats Mo’s arm. “Let her speak, Mo.” She turns back to me. “Go on, Twelve.”
“She didn’t have a choice that I left her.” I brush some dust from my arm. “That’s why we never knew each other. Maybe she’s bad, I don’t know. But I don’t think so.” I stare at a big cracked square on the wall that’s painted over with swirling letters — Free and Love — and let myself picture the mother I used to picture when I was younger. Before I ever saw any videos or read any experiment journals. The brown hair and warm eyes, the too-high voice when she sings, the feel of her arms around me, the smell of lilacs on her neck.
The Darkhouse Page 14