The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  Linda raises her hand. “Deacon?”

  “What?”

  “Can I pick up my stuff?”

  He kicks through the clothing pile. “No! Just sit until I say otherwise. And no more questions!” He lifts Betty’s footlocker. A shower of clothes and towels. A clear pint bottle, the room light captured in the glass, a soft landing in the waiting clothes.

  “Hey!” Betty says.

  “Shut up!” The Deacon’s eyes alight. “I’ve had enough of your attitude. Your . . . poison!” He crouches and picks up the bottle of peppermint schnapps. At its bottom, a few sips.

  “Fuck if that’s mine!” Betty says

  “Not another word!” The Deacon gathers cigarettes, another empty bottle. He beckons Heavy Metal. “Take her outside and wait for me.”

  Heavy Metal reaches for Betty’s arm, but she shrugs him off. “That’s not mine. Everyone here will tell you so.” Heavy Metal latches onto her elbow, a twist, Betty desperate to wriggle free. “The only ones who knew that shit was there were the ones who put it there. The same ones who told you it was fucking there.”

  “Get her out,” the Deacon says. “Now!”

  Betty kicks Heavy Metal in the shin and breaks free, the two of them locked in a dance, Betty careful to keep a cot between them. “You came here on a rumor. It’s a fucking setup, and you know it! But when Linda and Oakmont get jumped, you do shit. You know why?” Heavy Metal leaps over a cot, a stumble when his boot strikes Chris’s side, a weighty thud onto the floor. Betty scurries to the room’s other side. “You do shit because you’re a coward. A lazy, fucking coward—”

  The Deacon strides forward. His arms outstretched, a closing off of the narrow space. Betty ducks, but his hand clamps her neck. Betty yelps, fists swinging. The Deacon’s arm rigid, and her punches swipe the empty air between them before she clutches his hand. Her eyes shut and pained. Her voice fading. “You’re choking me . . .” She gasp. “Stop . . . shit . . . stop . . .”

  “Stop it!” Heather screams. “Fucking stop choking her!”

  The Deacon lets go, and with a shove, casts her into Heavy Metal’s arms. “Cowards, the both of you,” Betty says, a whisper, a gasp. She rubs her throat. “Lazy, motherfucking cowards.”

  The door slams. Kayla and the others still on their cots. Tears on Linda’s face.

  “Why’d you have to hurt her?”

  “She’s telling the truth,” Chris says. “That’s not hers.”

  The Deacon possessed. His breathing heavy. Grunts as he yanks drawers off their runners, shelves cleared with a sweep of his hand. The girls ordered to sit beneath the windows as he topples their mattresses. A tirade as he strips Betty’s sheets and piles up her clothes. “This wasn’t a secret. I know that. I see it written on your faces.” He stands beneath their ceiling’s hiding spot. The sisters lower their heads. The Deacon cinches the sheet’s corners, slings the bulging sack over his shoulder, and kicks his way through the floor’s clutter.

  Chris stands. “It wasn’t her fault!”

  The Deacon turns. “Whose was it then?”

  “You know who,” Heather says. Her gaze lifts from the floor and fixes on him. “Betty’s right, and you know it. It was the ones who told you it was here.”

  The Deacon opens the door. “This isn’t over yet. I’ll be meeting with all of you first thing tomorrow.”

  Heather follows him into the hallway. Behind her, Kayla and the sisters. “Hey!” Heather yells.

  The veins in the Deacon’s neck strain above his white collar. Beside him, Heavy Metal, his grip tight on Betty’s arm. “Back in your room!” the Deacon snaps.

  Heather steps forward. Old John at his desk, the connecting hallway’s divide. Beyond him, a gathering of whites. Donna and the twins up front. “How do you think they knew?” Heather points down the hall. “I don’t need to tell you because you already know.”

  A twitch in the Deacon’s eye. “I said back in—”

  “You want to see something?” Heather’s voice carries. Behind her, the opening of pod doors, a red spill into the hallway. “Let me take you to the golden girl’s pod. We’ll see what her and her ginger apes have stashed!”

  Donna whispers, and Ashley pushes her way back through the crowd.

  The Deacon calls to Old John. “Do your job and get them back to their rooms!” He turns to Heather. “You, too! All of you! Anyone not in their pod in thirty seconds will spend the rest of the week in isolation!”

  “Go on,” Betty twists her neck and works her jaw. “Any fool who wears a collar is going to believe what he wants to believe.”

  The other reds slink back to their rooms. Kayla and the sisters frozen. The Deacon joins Heavy Metal, a grasping of Betty’s other arm, Betty duck-walked between them. Heather shouts, “You got the wrong girl, Deacon. You got the wrong girl, and you know it!”

  Old John limps toward them. The jangle of keys. The scuff of his heavy leg. His hands outstretched, a gentle guiding. “Come on, girls. I don’t want you getting put upstairs.” He stands at their door’s threshold, his tone soft. The shutting door eclipses his face. “I’ll have a prayer or two for your friend tonight.”

  The latch’s click. The room’s silence. The sisters pull their mattresses back onto their bunks. Kayla on her knees, her necklace tucked in her towel’s folds. Heather paces—the door to the window and back, a path navigating the mess. Her hands on her head. A muttering of curses.

  Linda rearranges her blankets. “How long do you think she’ll be in iso?”

  “A long time.” Chris returns her shampoo and toothpaste to her bedside shelf. “Longer than she’s been in before, I bet.”

  “Maybe we all should go to the Deacon,” Linda says. “Tell him the stuff belongs to all of us. Zack’s already fired. Not like we’d be snitching. We’ll say he brought it and that we’re all to blame. And that the whites have been doing it too. He can’t punish us all, right? At least not as bad as he can punish one person. And if he finds out Donna’s involved—”

  “Fuck Donna.” Heather pauses her pacing to stare out the window.

  “Maybe Linda’s right.” Kayla lies across her cot and studies the ceiling. “We should go down and all take the blame. Stick it out together in iso—either all at once or in shifts or whatever the fuck they give us. And in the meantime, we’ll finalize our plans. We’ll rehearse. We won’t cause any trouble. And when we get our first opportunity, we’ll split.”

  “Shit.” Heather struggles to open the window. “Shit. Shit! Shit! Help me!”

  Kayla and the sisters run to her. The window stubborn, an opening of fits and budges, the push of icy air. In the courtyard, Heavy Metal fumbles with the gate’s lock. A police cruiser on the other side, snow in its headlight beams. Heavy Metal’s long shadow. The pickup and plow layered beneath the white. Betty shivers. Her hands clutch her bed-sheet satchel. Steam from her mouth. The Deacon by her side.

  The cruiser eases past the gate. A three-point turn, splashes of red across the snow. Heather the first to yell. “Betty! Betty!”

  Kayla and the sisters join. Overlapping voices. Saying nothing beyond her name. The breeze through the window’s grate, snow on their faces. “Betty!” A disjointed cry, echoes off brownstone walls. In the near distance, a dog pack’s answering barks. Betty looks up, a final resisting against the Deacon’s push before she disappears into the cruiser’s back. The Deacon closes the door, and his hand pats the cruiser’s top.

  The girls’ cries wither, the unsaid words like stones in their throats. The cruiser pulls through the gate. A last look then gone. Heavy Metal secures the padlock. The Deacon climbs the loading dock steps, a shuffle through the snow. His voice tired, his gaze on his feet. “Shut that window. Or leave it open and freeze. I don’t care.”

  Heather and Kayla in the cafeteria alcove. Rags and spray bottles in hand. The kitchen clatter, breakfast cleanup, lunch prep. The radio louder than normal. Pop songs. The weather report. Another storm, a half foot, maybe more. The girl
s linger in the closet. With them, a waste can from the lunch ladies’ break room. A sifting, wrappers and apple cores; the things they stick in their pockets—a safety pin, a lanyard with a broken clasp. Their plans intensifying, conversations spurred by Betty’s stripped bed, by the room’s new hush. They’ll go before another girl is put with them. They’ll replace their snoopings with a simpler course of action. Night. Trash can fires in the lav and common room, the alarms and their chaos. A bolt down the alcove stairwell, their supplies in-hand. The pickup’s plow a battering ram so fuck Heavy Metal’s key and the gate’s lock. They’ll make their way uptown to Heather’s old neighborhood. They’ll ditch the truck in an alley and lie low amid the backyard shadows while Heather knocks on a door. Her aunt, a woman who once loved her as her own. In her driveway, a car she rarely drives. She’ll hand over the keys and report it stolen the next morning. She will. She has to. Kayla’s new understanding—hope, outlandish and improbable—shines brightest when it’s the only option. “Tonight,” Linda whispered at breakfast, and they agreed. Tonight.

  Kayla and Heather step from the alcove. The back stairwell door opens and Ashley’s head sticks out. “Nurse Amy wants to see Kayla.”

  “What about?” Kayla asks.

  Ashley retreats, speaking as the door sighs shut behind her. “How the fuck should I know. Something about a letter.”

  Kayla stares at Heather. Their plans for tonight, these last hours. Now a letter, and who else but her mother—or at least word of her mother. In Kayla, a kindling, a stirring of the dead. The sensation heady, disorienting. Her mouth opens but a logjam chokes her throat, the pull of the past and the present and dozen vague futures.

  Heather places Kayla’s spray bottle on the shelf. “Go already. I’ll finish here.”

  A navigation between the cafeteria tables. A glance back, a bump into a chair. The thought of her mother a rising tide that pushes all else aside. Kayla rubs her head. The hard press of skull. The realization neither she nor her mother will be the same person. They’ve suffered alone, survived alone. Her steps quicker as she pushes through the cafeteria doors.

  The first-floor hallway. The Purity banners, taped and rehung after the fight that landed Kayla in iso. Notes from the music room’s piano, Mr. James playing, the voices of the youngest girls. “What a friend we have in Jesus . . .” Kayla jogging now, a turn into the entrance hallway. The guard’s post on the other side, the bank of monitors. The nurse’s door shut. A soft knock. A door locked for privacy. Kayla sees her mother inside, perhaps signing papers, a deliverance she hasn’t dared dream. Another knock, this one harder. A testing of the handle.

  “What’re you doing?” Heavy Metal in the doorway across the hall.

  “I’m seeing Nurse Amy.”

  “Nurse ain’t in. At least not until noon. She’s—”

  Her mother. Reunion. Escape. A child’s belief in happy endings. The notions crash around her, as fragile as stained glass, a drowning in colored dust. She pictures Heather and Ashley, the supply closet. Kayla turns and runs, each stride bringing speed. The hallway blurs, a tunnel of color and sound. A burst through the cafeteria doors. An apron-clad woman calls, a scolding to sweep up before the whites’ lunch. Kayla zigzags between the tables. The stink of her chemical cleaner lingering. The tabletops glisten beneath the lights.

  The alcove empty. Outside, the first snow flakes, the pickup speckled in white. Their spray bottles and rags on the supply closet floor, one bottle overturned and leaking from its cap, a trickle seeking the drain. Kayla steps back, a survey of the cafeteria. The tall ceiling, the lights and exposed ductwork. The swell of her heart consumed by the hush and empty tables.

  The back stairwell darker than normal, the first landing light out. The steps taken two at a time then a stumble over the broken dust mop. Heather crumpled in the landing’s dim corner, her back against the wall, her head hung. By her side, wooden splinters and a foot-long section of the handle’s top. Red streaks across her face. Her sweatpants and panties pulled past her knees. Blood between her legs.

  “Fuck, baby. Fuck.” Kayla kneels and pushes back Heather’s blood-matted hair. Heather’s eyes slivers of white, lulling passes of brown. Tremors in her thin lips. Blood rivulets in the handle’s carved notches. Kayla wipes the wood against her sweatpants and slides the handle into her sock.

  “You’re going to be OK,” Kayla says. Heather limp as Kayla pulls up her underwear and pants. An arm beneath her knees, another around her shoulders, a lift. Her friend no longer human, just another broken thing in this world of broken things. Kayla struggles to open the stairwell door then squints in the cafeteria’s bright lights. The weight in her arms evaporates. Her steps quicker, and the handle’s jagged tip pokes her leg. Her tears a wetness she can’t wipe. The cafeteria ladies with their hairnets and aprons, spatulas and silver trays—all frozen in the dishwasher’s dreamy haze as Kayla rushes toward them.

  “Help us!” Kayla cries. “For the fucking love of god, help us!”

  Dinner. The ghosts of empty seats. Kayla and the sisters talk of Heather’s return. A week in the hospital, but this morning, Linda saw the ambulance. Nurse Amy with an arm around Heather’s shoulders, an escort through the entry gates. “She was walking real slow,” Linda says.

  Kayla the initial suspect, the two of them alone. Blood on Kayla’s hands and clothes. An interrogation in the main office. The Deacon and one of the cops who delivered Kayla on a warm, rainy night. The cop asked about the blood, their use of an off-limits stairwell. The Deacon with his own questions—why was Kayla trying to sneak into the nurse’s office? His voice lowered—what about the other rumors? Their joined bunks. This attack sadistic and brutal, the kind triggered by jealousy. A lover’s rage.

  Kayla straight-faced, strengthened by the truth. Yes, they slept with bunks pushed together, their bond something beyond the Deacon’s sick mind. Ashley was the one who should be sitting in this chair. Ashley and her sister and Donna. A long stare as she said the Deacon knew the truth as well as she did. Kayla cleared only after Heather regained consciousness. Of course her friend hadn’t attacked her. Trouble was, she couldn’t say who had. Her memory erased. The building under tighter security, the reds and whites no longer allowed together, not even for morning convocation, but the investigation of the whites had run dry—their unified alibis, the lack of blood on their clothing, the inconclusive surveillance videos.

  Nurse Amy enters. She returns a tray to the dishwasher drop-off. Linda and Chris wave her over. “How’s she doing?” Chris asks.

  Nurse Amy sits. A rearranging of her ponytail. A tug of her lanyard. “She’s OK, considering. Tired. A little shaky still.”

  “Can we see her?” Kayla asks.

  The nurse looks over her shoulder. “Sure. But not for long.” She stands. Kayla and the sisters return their trays. Nurse Amy raises a hand as they pass Heavy Metal. “They’re with me.”

  The hallway hushed. In Kayla, the sensation of being whittled away. Her parents, her home and dog, and what remains eroded by the day, the machine’s grind, the abrasion of oppression and fears and uncertainty. The girls silent, but the message understood. Linda slips a hand into Kayla’s, her other already linked with her sister’s.

  The nurse’s office the same as her first night—hygiene posters, glass cylinders of cotton balls and tongue depressors. The scent of Lysol. Two cots wait beyond the examination area. Around each, a retractable curtain, a bit of privacy. “Heather?” Nurse Amy says. She pulls the curtain aside. “You have some visitors.”

  Heather sits, propped by pillows. Her face’s fading bruises. The girls step forward one at a time, tender hugs and whispered welcomes. They claim seats on the bed’s edge, the sisters on one side, Kayla on the other. A silent moment before Linda breaks into tears.

  “I’m OK.” Heather’s words slur. She pats Linda’s leg.

  “Five minutes, OK?” Nurse Amy says. “You can come again tomorrow. I’ll arrange it so you can have lunch together.” She d
raws the curtains, a surrounding of white.

  “Thank you,” Chris says.

  “You’re welcome.” The squeak of retreating sneakers. “Five minutes.”

  “How’re you feeling?” Linda asks.

  “I’ve been sleeping a lot.” A pause. “Wish I could share some of my pills.”

  Kayla whispers: “We’re bolting as soon as you’re ready. No more waiting.”

  Chris leans forward. “But we’re going to settle up first.”

  “Who else was with Ashley?” Kayla asks.

  “I don’t know. I seriously don’t. I see bits and pieces, but nothing really fits together. I can’t even say if Ashley was there.” A weak squeeze for Kayla’s hand. “I see you and I know you were carrying me.” She falls silent, a disconnect before she continues. “It felt like I was flying.”

  Linda wipes her cheek. “Then we’ll just get Ashley. One for one, at least that.”

  “Where will that get us?” Heather lets her head sink back into the pillow and closes her eyes. “If we’re going to go, let’s go. I don’t want messing with them to fuck our plans. Let’s just focus on what we need to do.” She sighs. “I’m tired of all the other stuff. All the hate. It’s killing me.” She lays a hand over her chest. “I’m done with all of it.”

  A rumble in the floor. Kayla thinks of the basement’s furnace, the riverside train. The shaking builds. The clatter of shelved canisters and vials, tremors in Kayla’s teeth. Chris goes to the room’s window. “It’s the Army. At least I think it is.”

  The others join her, Kayla with a hand to help Heather to her feet. Heather’s pace hobbled, a shuffling of socks over tile. “I have to take it easy. Don’t want to tear again.”

  The window faces the street. The glass trembles. Outside, a clanking procession. Transport trucks, armored cars.

  Linda lays a hand on the glass. “Sometimes it feels like someone’s picked up one end of the world and just sent all the loose ends tumbling.”