The First Stone

by Don Aker

  “That’ll be enough!” Mrs. Gregory’s voice. An ice pick in their throats. Then, “Stanley, the chair.”

  Stan stared at her a long moment, then hissed, “Bite me, bitch!” and sauntered past her out the door.

  Of course he’d been suspended for the remainder of the school year, but since that was his second time in grade eight, he’d gone on to nine the following September anyway. In the process, he’d acquired a nickname he’d worn proudly ever since.

  “What’s goin’ on down there?” Bigger asked. He pointed to a green truck that had pulled up in front of The Pit, the lettering on its side impossible to read from where they sat. Two men got out and stood looking up at the crumbling facade, talking and making notes on clipboards. Then they turned their attention to the buildings on either side of The Pit. One manpulled something out of his pocket and moved over to the alley between the hotel and Wade’s Laundry, and the something turned out to be a retractable tape that he used to measure the width of the alley, more information that ended up on the clipboard. The other man returned to the truck and started it, then drove it into the alley and out of view.

  “More buildin’ inspectors?” Jink asked.

  Reef shrugged, his rum buzz gone. “Maybe. I dunno. Let’s check it out.”

  They made their way back down the stairs, pausing twice to peer into the alley. There was no sign of the men.

  “Narcs?” Bigger suggested.

  Reef shook his head. “Don’t think so. They were payin’ more attention to the buildin’ than what’s inside.” Reef had had run-ins with undercover narcotics officers before. These two didn’t seem the type. Their busyness looked real.

  They reached the first floor and made their way to the entrance, where Jink eased his shoulder against the plywood, allowing Reef to peer through the upside-down V between the plywood and the door frame. Surveying the street for the two men, he saw no one, then pushed through the opening into sunlight.

  “Aww, Christ!” he moaned.

  Almost simultaneously, the two called, “Cops?”

  Reef slumped back against the crumbling wall. “I wish.”

  Bigger and Jink eased out onto the step beside Reef, turned in the direction he was staring.

  This time their voices were exactly simultaneous. “Fuck!”

  Chapter 2

  “You can take this garbage and shove it up your—”

  The final epithet was lost in the crash and clang of dishware and dinner tray meeting hard tile floor. Mashed potatoes, peas and meatloaf slid across the broad expanse of white, followed closely by a pot of tea and a dish of custard. The girl who had just placed the tray on the bed table turned an astonished face toward the nurse in the doorway.

  Mary Clayton sighed wearily. “I should’ve warned you about Mr. Harris, Leeza. He doesn’t think much of the—”

  “Pig slop!” the elderly man snorted, banging the rail on the side of his bed. “Nothin’ but pig slop in this place! Where’s my Maggie? Maggie! Look what they’re tryin’ to feed me!”

  Leeza Hemming braved a smile as she turned back to the patient. “It’s okay, Mr. Harris. You don’t have to eat this if—”

  “Maggie knows what I like!” he snapped. “Maggie knows.” He looked past her toward the doorway andcalled, his voice cracked and thin, “Maggie! Where are you, girl?”

  Nurse Clayton clucked softly and moved toward the bed. “Now, Mr. Harris, you know Maggie isn’t here. Remember?”

  The old man turned to her, his lower lip quivering. “She’s not here?”

  The nurse’s tone was low, professionally sincere. “No, Mr. Harris. Maggie’s not here.”

  He looked toward the door again and started to cry, his thin shoulders quaking as he sobbed.

  Ignoring the mess at her feet, Leeza placed her hand on the man’s arm, gently squeezing it and speaking in soft tones. “It’s okay, Mr. Harris. No need to get yourself all upset now. Everything’ll be fine.”

  The old man looked up at the girl as if seeing her for the first time. “Maggie?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not Maggie. But I’m sure she’d want you to eat something, wouldn’t she? How about some soup? Does that sound like something you’d like?”

  “You’re not Maggie?” The man’s voice seemed to come from somewhere far inside him.

  “No. I’m Leeza. But I bet the cook’s been saving a bowl of soup for someone special like you. Would you like me to check?”

  His eyes still leaking tears, he reached for her hand and gripped it like a lifeline. “Will you bring it to me?”

  “Of course I will. You just lie back and rest and I’ll take care of everything.” She turned to pick up the fallen items, but Nurse Clayton waved her away. “I’ll look after this. It’s my fault for not warning you in the first place. You go see about that soup.”

  Thirty minutes later, the nurse poked her head in the door again to see the teenager sitting by Mr. Harris’s bed, chatting softly as she spooned the last of some chicken broth into the elderly man’s mouth. He watched her with bright, interested eyes as she got up to leave. “You’ll come see me again?” he asked.

  “Sure. I’ll be here again tomorrow after school.” She leaned over and patted his hand. “You won’t forget me now, will you?”

  He shook his head.

  “He already has,” said the nurse a moment later in the hall. “Forgotten you, I mean.” She took the bowl and spoon and set them on the meal trolley with the other dishes, then accompanied the teenager down the corridor past the nurses’ station.

  “Oh, I know,” Leeza said. “He still thinks I’m Maggie.”

  “His wife,” said the nurse. “She was a resident here too. Passed away last year, poor soul.”

  “Sad,” said Leeza. “But, in a way, he’s lucky.” Seeing the surprise on the nurse’s face, she continued, “I mean that he doesn’t remember she’s gone. This way, she’ll always be alive for him.”

  The nurse nodded. “For someone so young, youknow a lot about older people. You must have grandparents.”

  Leeza shook her head. “They died before I was born.”

  The nurse seemed about to say something else, but they’d arrived at the elevators. Leeza pressed the down button. “It was nice meeting you,” she said.

  “So you’re back again tomorrow?” asked the nurse. “The director said something about you and a course requirement.”

  “Not exactly. I had to do some volunteering for a high school credit I was taking, but that’s all finished.”

  “What was the course?”

  “Career and Life Management. It’s compulsory, and my teacher included twenty hours of volunteer service as one of the completion requirements. But I finished those last semester.”

  The nurse looked puzzled. “Then why—?” Her unasked question hung in the air.

  Leeza hesitated, wished she’d been able to leave before the questions began. Then. “I just really enjoyed doing it. When I finished at the Children’s Hospital, they put me in touch with the director here at Silver Meadows, and she said she could use me.”

  “Can we ever. We’ve really been short-staffed since the government cut back our funding. But why’d you choose this place?”

  Leeza looked back in the direction of Mr. Harris’s room, a sudden throb of sadness catching herunaware. She took a hard breath, used it to force back the feeling, then turned to the nurse. “I can’t stand the thought of someone being …” She paused, groping for a word. “Helpless. Trapped in a room. I spent time with some kids like that at the Children’s, and it really felt good when I could take their minds off being there.”

  Mary nodded. “That’s the reason I became a nurse in the first place.” She smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Unfortunately, it often gets so busy here that we end up doing far less of that than our patients need. That’s why volunteers like you are so important.” The elevator arrived with a bing and the doors glided open. “Thinking about a career in medicine
, Leeza?”

  The girl shook her head. “Not really. Volunteering is one thing,” she said as she stepped inside, “but a career is something else. I really don’t know what I want to do just yet.”

  “Well, in the meantime, you’re certainly welcome here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” Leeza heard as the doors slid closed.

  Out in the parking lot, she scanned the cars for her parents’ green Subaru, momentarily forgetting where she had parked it. She was thinking about the things she had said to Nurse Clayton. Or really, the things she hadn’t said. Things like why she had chosen to do her volunteer service in hospitals and seniorcitizens’ homes rather than in community centers and daycare facilities like the rest of her classmates. She’d had a hard enough time trying to explain it to her mother and stepfather, who felt that being around “all that pain and suffering,” as they’d put it, was the last thing Leeza needed. “You don’t have to prove anything,” they’d said.

  Well, maybe they were wrong. Maybe there was plenty she had to prove. Like there was a reason she was still living and breathing when her older sister, Ellen, had stopped doing both six months ago. Ellen, who had been Student Council president, top scorer on the senior girls’ basketball team and the lead in two of the school’s drama productions. And managed to maintain an honors average at the same time. That is, before the cancer brought everything to an end, faster than Leeza could have imagined possible.

  Besides, it wasn’t as though Leeza had much else occupying her time anyway. Her sister had been one of those people everyone loved to be around, and it was only when Ellen got sick that Leeza discovered the people she spent time with were more Ellen’s friends than hers. There were some, like Robin and Jen, who still called once in a while and even dropped by from time to time, but without Ellen there to make the moments seamless, getting together had seemed to become—for her friends, anyway—more obligation than pleasure.

  The air had cooled somewhat since she’d arrived, but the late-afternoon sun still felt warm on her neck as she crossed the parking lot and unlocked the Subaru. Although she’d been driving for more than a year, she was still grateful for the freedom she felt each time she slid behind the steering wheel. It was driving that had helped her cope with losing her sister, being able to point the vehicle in whatever direction she wanted and just go. Even now, when thoughts of Ellen began to seep into every moment, welling up like water in a footprint after a rain, she’d ask her parents for the keys to the car. It wasn’t just the mechanics of driving that helped turn her mind away from the horror of that hospital room, it was never knowing exactly what lay ahead. Even driving through familiar neighborhoods gave her opportunities for surprise: the kid who rode his bike into the street without looking, the driver who didn’t yield the right of way or turned without signaling. During those final days, when her family had waited—even prayed—for the inevitable, it was those moments of not knowing that had somehow made bearable the tragedy that was Ellen. Even going home wasn’t something Leeza was certain she’d do; it always seemed to be a conscious choice she made at the end of every drive.

  Like the choice she’d made to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital. And now here, at Silver Meadows. She needed the feeling those places gave her—that her being there made a difference. Unlike the times she’d sat with Ellen, who in those last few days hadn’t evenseemed to know there was someone holding her hand, someone sponging her forehead, someone choking back sobs in the stillness of the room.

  For a moment, memories of her sister washed over her—Ellen laughing on the phone, Ellen singing in the shower, Ellen lying in the burnished mahogany casket at Proule’s Funeral Home—and Leeza had to grip the steering wheel to keep from shaking, from sobbing. Her long fingernails bit into the flesh of her palms, and the pain somehow made sitting there, alive and breathing, less wrong.

  When the final wave shuddered through her, she slid the key into the ignition and started the car. Glancing at the clock on the dash, she saw she still had time for a drive before heading home.

  Chapter 3

  “They can’t do this!” Bigger snarled.

  “Goddamn right!” agreed Jink. “The Pit belongs to us!”

  Reef said nothing, just kept looking at the sign painted on the green truck: “SCOTIA DEMOLITION: We Turn Eyesores Into Assets.”

  The two men were nowhere in sight, probably around back of the building with their measuring tapes and clipboards. Reef moved down the steps and toward the truck as if wading through deep water, his steps slow and deliberate.

  “Reef?” Jink called. “Whatcha doin’, man?”

  Reef didn’t answer. He reached the truck and stood staring at the words on the side, the letters formed from a continuous stylized fuse. The fuse stretched back to a picture of a detonator being pressed by a hand, giving the absurd impression that Scotia Demolition had blown up the rest of the body along with whatever eyesore had required their attention.

  Jink and Bigger came down the steps to stand beside Reef. “Ya think they can really do this?” Bigger asked.

  “No way!” Jink said. “No jerks with measurin’ tapes are gonna tear down The Pit. Not while I’m here.”

  Reef turned to them. “It ain’t them that’s doin’ it.”

  “Yeah, they’re just the math guys,” said Bigger.

  “Engineers,” corrected Jink.

  “Right,” Bigger agreed. “They prob’ly got minimum-wagers to set the explosives.”

  “That ain’t what I meant,” Reef snapped. “They’re only the guys paid to take it down. It’s the ones who own The Pit that’re doin’ it.”

  “I din’t think nobody owned it.”

  Reef scowled. “Somebody owns it. asshole. Everything’s owned by somebody. Even if it’s just the city!”

  Bigger picked up a shard of glass glinting on the sidewalk, a fragment of a bottle broken a long time ago. “Well,” he vowed, “I don’t care who owns it. It ain’t comin’ down.” He glanced toward the street for cars or pedestrians. Seeing none, he strolled over to the truck and held the shard against the back fender, then dragged its jagged edge along the full length of the vehicle. When he had finished, it looked as though there were now two stylized fuses, the second a thin white line spelling an expletive between the words Eyesores and Assets.

  Jink hooted, then pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket. Bending down, he flicked open the blade and inserted it with almost surgical precision into one of the Michelin all-season radiais. As the air hissed out, he sauntered around the truck, repeating thesurgery on each of the tires while the vehicle settled geriatrically to its rims.

  Reef grinned, remembering the rock inside his jacket. He reached into his pocket and felt the cool smoothness beneath his fingers, all the while admiring the expanse of windshield before him. He pulled the rock out and eased his arm back, winding up for—

  “Hey! What’re you doing?” All three whirled to see the two men with clipboards running toward them down the alley. One took out a cellphone and punched numbers as he ran. Three numbers.

  “Let’s get outta here,” Reef ordered.

  “We can take ‘em,” said Bigger.

  “They called 911,” Reef hissed. “Cops’ll be here in a minute.” He jammed the rock back into his pocket. “C’mon.” He turned and ran. Jink and Bigger followed.

  “Sonsabitches!” they heard behind them. “Look what they did to my truck!”

  Jink hooted again, his laughter high and wild as the three raced out of the alley and down the street. Reef looked back to see the man with the cellphone in pursuit. “You lousy punks!” he shouted. “Wait’ll I get my hands on you!”

  He was more agile than his forty-some years had led Reef and the others to expect. More than a block from The Pit, the man was still behind them and showing no sign of flagging. It reminded Reef of the times his grandfather would drunkenly roar his name, callinghim a “good-fer-nothin’ sonuvabitch bastard” as the boy he
once was cowered outside whatever rathole they were living in, listening through sobs to his grandmother’s gentle voice inside. Settling his grandfather, soothing him, making everything all right again. Until the next time.

  “Let’s split up!” Reef shouted as they pounded down Patterson. He knew they could outrun the truck owner, but there was no sense in prolonging the inevitable. “He’ll give up when he can’t chase all of us.”

  Bigger grunted and veered to the right, darting into an alley between Bob’s House of Billiards and a greasy spoon that sold fish and chips wrapped in newspapers.

  “Later,” Jink called, and turned down North Street.

  Reef looked back and saw the man pause, uncertain. He laughed and, feeling the rock bounce in his pocket, suddenly knew where he was heading.

  Leeza showed her volunteer parking permit to the attendant at the gate, waited as he raised the barrier, then eased the Subaru out into traffic. She liked rush hour driving, liked constantly having to watch the cars around her weave in and out of openings that appeared and dissolved like eddies in a stream. She didn’t even mind the jerks that cut her off without so much as a nod or a wave, so intent on saving those two seconds or three yards that apparently were worth therisk of collision. Already she’d seen two cars pulled over to the side, their red-faced drivers exchanging insurance details over crumpled fenders.

  Traffic seemed even heavier this afternoon, thanks to a work crew on Elgin Avenue that had diverted drivers to an alternate route on Bentley. Vehicles slowed to a crawl and, without meaning to, Leeza found herself playing the driver game Ellen had invented years ago when they were bored on long drives. She looked at the driver in the Camry on her right, a man in his mid-thirties whose face was set in determined lines. He glanced at his watch, grimaced, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, glanced at his watch again. “Robert,” murmured Leeza. “Divorced. Promised he’d take his kids to their soccer game.” In her rearview mirror, she saw a woman with blond hair piled high on her head driving a battered Buick Century. “Raylene. Mary Kay representative. Still hoping for the pink Cadillac.”