by Jessie Cooke
Poppy stood looking at the ruins of the place that had been her home for the first sixteen years of her life. She didn’t feel any warmth, and she wasn’t assaulted by sweet childhood memories. It was just the opposite as she stared out at the rusted shells of places people used to call home, surrounded now by rotting remnants of discarded furniture, where foxtail grass and cattail reeds grew up around them. Poppy wasn’t one of those people who believed a place held bad karma, but if she had been, she knew this place would be at the top of the list of all things bad. It was Poppy’s personal idea of hell...but she had survived, and just to spite the ones who had made her life so miserable, she had thrived.
Poppy was sixteen when she left home. She’d been back twice since, both times to look for Bubba. If not for the disappearance of her little brother, she would have never set foot in Louisiana again. Her therapist told her once that she should be proud of herself for surviving what she’d been through, but pride wasn’t exactly what she felt. Poppy had done a lot of things in her life, some of them despicable. Most of the time she could forgive herself for those things. Everything she’d done had been about survival. But her therapist also told her that sometimes surviving didn’t necessarily mean coming out in one piece on the other side. Sometimes you had to leave little pieces of yourself scattered across the hemisphere of the hell that you’d walked through. Poppy didn’t tell her therapist, but she had left more than pieces of herself. She’d left her entire self behind and created a new one. If not for Bubba...she would have never looked back.
Poppy learned a lot in the years since she’d been gone from the bayou. Some of it she’d learned from the therapist that she now saw once a week, and some of it just from life itself. One of the most important things she had learned was that truths often came to humans slowly. As a matter of fact, some truths were so easily dismissed before they were processed that they were gone, just like that, as if they’d never existed in the first place. It had taken Poppy five years to process the truth her brain had been trying to tell her all along. Her baby brother Bubba wasn’t missing, he was dead.
Poppy had spent so much time looking for him and expecting him to pick up the phone and call her someday that she’d never grieved over losing him, and that was the hardest part about admitting the truth. Once she had, she’d spent two weeks holed up in her room, crying, sleeping, cursing, and crying some more. Then one morning she’d woke up and decided what she had to do. She had to go back to Louisiana one more time and find out once and for all what happened to her little brother. She couldn’t live with the knowledge that someone out there knew what happened to him, and maybe where he was. Most especially she couldn’t live with knowing that the person she was sure knew those facts was someone who should have been protecting Bubba. Someone who had promised her the day she left that he’d look out for their little brother. Poppy didn’t have any proof he was involved in what happened to her little brother, but she was at the point in her life where she had to know. She couldn’t move forward any further if those questions kept pulling her back.
She took a deep breath and began walking toward the metal box where she’d lived with her family for sixteen years. She refused to call it her “home.” It was never a home. It was purgatory...or maybe hell itself. It was abandoned now, empty for half a decade and rotting into the environment around it. The front door hung sideways off its hinges and she stepped up carefully onto the rotting wooden steps and peered inside. The windows were either broken or covered in black mold and the floor had caved in places, opening holes for the vermin that lived in the swamp to move in and out of. The old brown shag carpet was still there, but it was filthy and matted from years of flooding and environmental abuse. She pushed the broken door back out of her way and stepped inside. As soon as she did, she was assailed from all sides by the voices...the sounds of hell...
“Chauncey! Get your ass over here now!”
“Pauline Marie! Shut the fuck up or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
“Billy Ray! Why the fuck you always got your nose in a book? Give me that! You’re reading romance novels!” Maniacal laughter and then, “Are you a fucking faggot? I swear, boy, I’ll beat that shit right out of you. Get on outside now and act like a man!”
“What are you looking at, Chauncey? Huh? What the fuck are you looking at? Look at me like that again and see if you don’t get the living snot beat out of you, boy! Now go on! All of you get on outta here!” An evil grin, “Unless y’all all wanna stay and see what I’m about to do to your mama. Go on, woman, get in the bedroom and you better be naked by the time I get there.”
Poppy felt a single tear roll down her face, but she didn’t wipe it away. She let it fall and splash onto an old beer can...her stepfather’s favorite brand. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, she kicked it. It hit the wall on the other side of the small trailer, bounced off and landed in a pile of debris. The place smelled like the mold that crept up the walls and across the floor. She could hear the buzzing sounds of insects out in the swamp behind her and inside the trailer in front of her. She could also hear scratching noises, rodents underneath the trailer she guessed. Poppy wasn’t afraid of mice, or rats, or the big nutrias that lived in the bayou. Even the vermin were more human than the people she’d lived with most of her life.
Poppy walked through the place, careful to watch her step around the rotting floorboards, with the memories continuing to flow, no matter how hard she tried to push them away. The place had been a hovel, even when people lived there and called it home. It was never a home. It was more like the hell for dreams, a place where they went to die. A place where people who failed at life existed but didn’t actually “live.”
She walked carefully down the hallway, trying not to touch anything but occasionally having to reach out and steady herself with one of the walls, thanks to the way the trailer now sat sideways on top of its rotting foundation. When she made it to the furthest wall, she stepped into the bedroom on the right and as she looked at the rotting remnants of car posters that still hung on one of the walls, she fought for her own breath. She was in the room where Bubba had lived, alongside their other brother, Chauncey. Where Bubba was quiet, shy, and content to keep such a low profile that people often forgot he was in the room, Chauncey had been just the opposite. Chauncey was born with a beautiful face, and he’d learned early on how to use it to survive. Poppy hadn’t blamed him for that, and neither had Bubba. They all had their own ways...they lived in a place where survival was the first thing you thought about in the morning, and the last thing at night. They all had to find a way to cope, and for Chauncey that had been his dreams of someday going out to California and using that face he’d been born with to make millions...and a life where he no longer had to live in fear every day.
Billy Ray...or Bubba as they called him...had been the polar opposite. He was born with an average face, but a brilliant brain. Bubba would rather be reading than doing anything else. He devoured books and Poppy was sure he lived vicariously through them, in a place where you didn’t have to fear whether or not today would be the day your abuser might go too far...if today might be the day when you took your last breath.
Poppy could still remember the fat, happy baby Bubba once was, before the reality of their situation set in, the way it had with his older siblings. She had loved that baby like he was her own, and many long nights when she fed him his bottle and rocked him and sang him to sleep, she imagined that he was. Poppy was nowhere old enough to be his mother. She’d only been five when Bubba was born, and Chauncey six, but they had both doted on the baby...like he was somehow the hope that the family had been missing all along, which was funny considering that Bubba was the flesh and blood of the step-monster that taught her and Chauncey everything they knew about living in fear. It was impossible, though, to hold that against the baby boy. Poppy had been able to see his goodness from the minute they brought him home, and some days when the bad things overwhelmed her, she’d just go sit with Bu
bba, and try to inhale his spirit.
The frame of the tiny bed where her brother used to sleep was still there, rotting into the moldy mess around it. So many nights she had come in to that room and sat on the edge of that bed to read him a story, or sing him a song until he fell asleep...so many times she sat there with him, trying to protect him from what was going on just a few rooms away. She wiped at the tears on her face then wondered why she was really there. Bubba obviously wasn’t and hadn’t been for a long while. Why had she come back to a place that still haunted her nightmares, a place that had created the cold, lonely, fearful woman that she was now? Maybe it was just to prove to herself once and for all that this part of her life was over. The monsters that had ruled the metal box and terrorized the children were gone. Maybe she just needed to see it for herself one last time in order to maintain the resolve she had that she would never, ever turn into that woman, Marlene Le Blanc, who had the nerve to call herself a “mother.”
Poppy began to feel sick to her stomach. Even with the smells of death and decay, she could still smell that old familiar smell of desperation, the one that had permeated every one of her senses going back as far as the first day she could consciously remember. She turned to leave and was suddenly facing her own bedroom. The place that she tried to decorate with things she found in dumpsters and ultimately bought with money she made babysitting for all the other dregs of society in the trailer park. She’d decorated it with pink, frilly things and every so often when she sat on the bed with the door and windows tightly closed, she would be able to imagine that she was like the other girls, the ones she went to school with, the ones whose parents were poor, but still looked down on her because poor or not, they didn’t live with monsters. It was as if that smell of desperation had followed her around everywhere she went back then, and suddenly she was afraid if she stayed inside the metal box too long, it would somehow seep back into her pores and settle into her soul where she’d never be able to get it out.
She turned and ran for the door, slipping and almost falling through a rotting place on the living room floor, but finally making it outside where she immediately stopped and added a pile of vomit to the rest of the ruins around her. She retched until there was nothing left, and when she pulled her head up and dug through her purse for a tissue, she heard it...the sound of an approaching motorcycle. And she knew before he even got there, who it was going to be. Gabriel...Chauncey’s best friend and biggest advocate. Somehow, he’d found out that she was back in town, and as usual he was trying to cut her off at the pass. This time however, her brother was going to have to speak for himself.
She wiped her mouth and stood up straight, aligning her spine with the metal pole that protruded from the ground behind her. It used to hold an American flag, as if this place was any part at all of the American dream. She kept her eyes on Gabe as he drove his Harley up next to her car and turned off the ignition. She didn’t move or avert her gaze when he approached her. She watched as the man she thought she was in love with, when he was just a boy and she a lost little girl, stopped about three feet in front of her and said:
“Hey, Poppy.”
“Gabriel.”
He ran his eyes over her, and then they went to the ruins behind her and he said, “Why are you here?”
Without a quiver in her voice she said, “To prove once and for all that Chauncey killed our brother.”
“Poppy, don’t do this. You know Chance is no killer...and he would have never hurt Bubba...”
“He’s not a killer?”
“You can’t seriously hold James against him. You of all people...”
“No. Our stepfather needed to die. He was no more use on this earth than a cockroach. But you can’t say that Chance isn’t capable of killing a human being either. Maybe that just gave him a taste for it...”
“Jesus, Poppy, stop this. You know Chance. You know him! He wouldn’t ever hurt Bubba. You and Bubba were all he lived for all those years. Shit, he might have killed himself when he was a teenager if not for the two of you.”
“He can tell me that himself,” she said. “I want Chauncey to look me in the eye once and for all and at least tell me Bubba is dead. I’ve waited five years...it’s time for him to tell me the truth.”
“Poppy, Chance misses Bubba as much as you do...”
“Bull! Chance went on with his life like nothing ever happened, like Bubba never even existed. He was eleven years old, Gabe! Eleven-year-old boys don’t just disappear without a trace, and people who love them don’t just forget they ever existed.”
“Chance hasn’t forgotten him, Poppy, but you know what he went through with the police back then. If you come around stirring all that up again...”
“What? I’ll make his life miserable?” she said. “Good. I don’t imagine the end of my little brother’s life was anything more than that. It’s time that Chauncey did the right thing. It’s time for him to admit that Bubba is dead...and he killed him.”
3
Chance tucked his phone and wallet into his pocket, shook the club attorney’s hand, and thanked him before walking out of the police department. The sun was just beginning to go down and he was thankful they’d gotten him out of there before he had to spend the night on the floor of the holding tank. He’d be working his ass off for months to pay Blackheart back for the bail, but it would be worth it. The last time he was arrested it took them two days to get him into a cell with a bed...not that they were much more comfortable than the floor of the tank, but they didn’t smell quite as bad.
“Hey.” Chance started at the sound of Blackheart’s voice. He turned toward his president and Blackheart was holding out the key to his chopper.
“Thanks, and thanks for getting me out of here.” He hesitated and then he said, “I didn’t hurt her...at least not on purpose.”
Blackheart nodded. “I know. But I want you to stay at the club until this is taken care of. Don’t have any contact with her...”
“I need to talk to her. I don’t even know what happened with the baby...”
“Sally’s already there. She’ll let us know what’s going on as soon as she knows. You need to stay away.” Blackheart sighed and said, “Besides, you have another problem to deal with right now.”
Chance frowned. He couldn’t even imagine what Blackheart might think was more important that what was going on with Sharon and the baby right then. “What other problem?”
“Poppy’s home.”
The knot that had been in Chance’s stomach since he looked in the bathroom window and saw Sharon on the floor in a puddle of her own blood grew exponentially at the sound of his sister’s name. Poppy was exactly what he didn’t need just then. “Fuck. Does she know about this?”
“Not that I know of. Gabe went out and talked to her...”
“Went out where?”
“She was out at the trailer park.”
“Jesus. When is she going to give this up?”
“You’ll need to ask her that. Come on, the guys were barbecuing when I left. Let’s get you fed, and we’ll go from there.”
Chance sighed and nodded. He knew Blackheart was right; going to see Sharon while she had assault charges pending against him was a bad idea. But he just couldn’t wrap his head around why she would do that. She was bleeding before he even went anywhere near her, and she had to know the only reason he busted that door down was to get to her. Being pregnant had messed with her moods, a lot. He’d been as understanding about that as he possibly could, he thought, anyway. He wondered sometimes, though, if it was more than just hormonal. And then he wondered sometimes if she regretted her choice to have her rapist’s baby.
He got on his chopper and he and Blackheart rode back out to the club. The prospects must have brought the bike in one of the vans; that was usually how Blackheart did it. There was no way in hell the prez was letting any of them ride bitch on his bike, not unless they were on the verge of death or something.
It was full dar
k when they got back to the club. The dirt lot in front was full of bikes and when Blackheart opened the door, they were assaulted by loud music, voices, and laughter. For some that might be overwhelming when they were going through what Chance was...but it had a calming effect on him. Chance had had a pile of shit for a family his entire life, until he hooked up with the Jokers. Now, along with Sharon and the kids, they were his family. The ramshackle club at the edge of the bayou, where the swamps teemed with creatures that could kill a grown man, was the one place on earth where he felt the safest.
A few of the guys slapped him on the back as he walked through and when he reached Gabe at the end of the bar his friend put a mug of beer in his hand. Chance took a long drink and when he sat it down Gabe said, “You okay?”
Chance nodded. He was embarrassed about his earlier meltdown in front of his friend, but at least with Gabe he had to be much less embarrassed than he would have been in front of any of the others. Gabe knew him better than anyone else in the world, so hiding things or even feelings from him was pointless. Proving Chance’s point Gabe said, “Blackheart told you, didn’t he?”
Chance took another drink of the beer and lit a cigarette before nodding and saying, “Yeah. My sister is in town.” Gabe nodded and Chance said, “He said you talked to her? She have anything new to say, or is she still singing the same old song?”
Gabe looked like he didn’t want to tell his friend, but after a long hesitation he said, “She’s not just saying you’re responsible for him being missing any more. She’s saying...” He hesitated again and when Chance cocked an eyebrow at him, then finally said, “She thinks Bubba is dead...”
“Well, that’s good,” Chance said, although it hurt his heart and made him sick to his stomach to say it. Bubba still haunted him every night in his dreams, his goofy smile and the sweet way he worried about his brother and sister no matter how shitty his own life was. But Chance had accepted years before that he’d never see his little brother again. Poppy hadn’t been able to accept it, and she blamed Chance for the boy’s disappearance, returning to Louisiana and the basin every couple of years to haunt him in her own way. “I mean, at least she’s accepted that she’s not going to find him, right?”